Full text of "The Fundamentals of Geology and Their Bearings on the Doctrine of a Literal ..."

See other formats

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project
to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the
publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.

We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web

at |http : //books . google . com/

BERKEiey^

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA ,

EX. UBRIS

QEOR^E MmMCS mWl^ON

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Digitized by

Google

Critical Opinions Regarding the First Edition of the Present

Work, which Was Issued under the Title of

"Illogical Geology" (1906)

"I have been intensely interested in your 'Illogieal Geology,' and I
think you prove your points conclusively. ' '

The Rev. S. Baring-Gould,
Author of ** Onward, Christian Soldiers."
Lew Trenchard, England.

"It is a very clever book." David Stare Jordan,

President of Leland Stanford University.

"I do not see why the argument is not scientific and demonstrative.
It seems to me that you have demonstrated the hopelessly unscientific
character of the hitherto accepted geological notions.''

Prop. William Cleaver Wilkinson,

University of Chicago.

"My first impression of the work is that it may serve a useful pur-
pose in orienting geologists as to the correct appearance of their views
upon the leading problems of the science.

"As a geologist, I some time ago ceased to theorize. I am simply
noting facts and trying to explain them." 0. W. Hall,

Professor of Geology and Mineralogy, University of Minnesota.

"I must confess that I have never read anything clearer and more
convincing on the subject. It seems to me final, so far as the evolution-
ary theories and claims go." William G. Moorehead,

President of Xenia Theological Seminary, Xenia, Ohio.

"The book ought to have a place among college text-books."

Prop. Luther T. Townsend,

Boston University.

"There are many things in your book which start reflection, and
show how far we are from having yet attained settled results in the
study of the rocks. ... I shall probably hear more of your book as ,
time goes on." Prop. James Orr, ]

United Free Church College, Glasgow, Scotland. [

"I think you have brought out with gpreat clearness the difficulties
of supporting the evolution theory from the geological side."

Prop. Geo. Howard Parker,
Department of Zoology, Harvard University.

* '■ Many thanks for your book, which I have read with much interest.
. . . Sir H. Howorth's arguments from the presence of herds of mam-
moths, etc., in places where they must have been overwhelmed by a sudden
catastrophe, have always seemed to me very strong, and have never yet
been answered by * orthodox' geology." Prop. A. H. Sayce,

Oxford University, England.

"It is a remarkable niece of logical reasoning. You are a cogent
writer, and I am glad we have you on the side of 'primal orthodoxy.' "

Prop. Franklin Johnson,

University of Chicago.

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Digitized by

Google

Digitized by

Google

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Th(

Fundamentals of
Geology

And, Their Bearings on the Doctrine
of a Literal Creation

GEORGE McCREADY PRICE. B.A.

Professor of Geology, College of Medical Evangelists, Loma Linda, California; Author

of "Outlines of Modern Science and Modern Christianity" (1902),

"God'sTwo Books" (1911)

It is a singular and a notable fact, that while most
other branches of science have emancipated them-
selves from the trammels of metaphysical reason-
ing, the science of geology still remains imprisoned
in "a priori" theories. — Sir Henry Hotoorih: "The
Glacial Nightmare and the Flood," Preface 7.

Pacific Press Publishing Association

Mountain View, California

Portland, Ore. Calgary, Alberta. Canada Kansas City. Mo.

Digitized by VjOOQIC

EARTH

SCIENCC8

LIBRARY

PACIFIC PRESS PUBLISHING

ASSOCIATION

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

'^t?

EARTH

SCIENCES

UBRARY

TO THE MEMORY OF

Lord Francis Bacon and Sir Isaac Newton,
men who realized most clearly the true objects of

NATURAL SCIENCE,

the methods by which it should be pursued,

as well as its limitations,

and under whose wise guidance

all that is substantial and enduring

in modem science has been discovered,

this book f' reverently dedicated by

THE AUTHOR

384637

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Digitized by

Google

PREFACE

What may be called the first edition of the present work
was printed in the summer of 1906 under the title of
'* Illogical Geology/^ It was only a pamphlet, and was in-
tended only as a sort of trial edition, being circulated pri-
vately by the author for examination and criticism, some
five hundred copies being distributed gratuitously among
the geologists and other scientists of this country and Eng-
land. A large number of replies were received. The presi-
dent of one of our greatest universities, who is rightly con-
sidered the leading authority in one department of zoology,
wrote the author some six letters in defense of the popular
theories; but he presented nothing in the way of argument
that had not been considered in '^Illogical Geology,'' and
closed the subject by saying that he did not see '/anything
very amazing" in my Five Facts. But the replies from
other illustrious scholars of international reputation have
encouraged the author to believe that these Facts, as well
as the whole general argument, absolutely demand a recon-
struction of geological theory; and under this belief this
preliminary outline has been revised and extended into the
present volume, the changes warranting also a change of title.

No one was more painfully conscious of the crudeness
and imperfections of the first edition than was the author.
But it served its purpose in shaping up the subject; and
the criticisms of many friends have been helpful in showing
how it ought to be improved. However, the corrections and
enlargements here presented have come chiefly from im-
portant discoveries that have since been made.

Perhaps of first importance among the latter should
be mentioned the great increase in our knowledge of the
so-called faulted area in Montana and Alberta, where sev-
eral thousand square miles of Cambrian or Pre-Cambrian
rocks occur, often apparently conformably, on the Cre-
taceous (see frontispiece). Bailey Willis and others had

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

8f^••^>••:^•^ ::. \:\.rPreface

already studied the southern portion of this area in Mon-
tana, though their work was unknown to the author; but
it is only quite recently that the mountains of all this
vast area have been studied together, with the result that
similar conditions are now known to prevail over a
district some 350 miles long from north to south, and
about twenty or twenty-five miles from east to west. These
things, with other discoveries elsewhere, have made it
necessary to rewrite completely chapter 5; while a number
of photographs have been added to help make the subject
clearer. It now looks as if this very striking example of
Palgeozoic rocks quite obviously deposited in a natural way
on top of Cretaceous over an immense extent of country,
may do more than the hundreds of quite similar examples
elsewhere have hitherto been able to accomplish in com-
pelling a complete reform in geological theory.

Another important event since issuing '* Illogical Ge-
ology'' has been the publication of the English transla-
tion of the great work of Eduard Suess, '^The Face of
the Earth," with which the author had been acquainted
previously only in an indirect way. For those who are
familiar with this masterly work, it will be unnecessary to
call attention to the many ways in which it confirms the
positions taken in the first edition of the present work
regarding (1) the radical differences between the ancient
strata and the deposits now forming in our modern oceans,
(2) the absolute fixedness of our present continents since
the beginning of scientific observation, and hence (3)
the hopelessness of trying longer to explain these ancient
deposits on the basis of uniformity. Indeed, this work of
Eduard Suess, who is perhaps the greatest of living geol-
ogists, may well be called the epitaph of the doctrine of
uniformitarianism.

Professor Suess alludes to **the remarkable fact that
it has been found possible to employ the same terminology
to distinguish the sedimentary formations in all parts of
the world.'' (Vol. 2, p. 540.) He reverts to this problem
again and again, as if troubled by this modern form of the
onion-coat theory; and finally, in putting it in the form
of a question, which he considers one of the greatest prob-

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Preface 9

lems of geology, as to how one of these formations ''recurs
in parts of the earth so widely removed from one another,
. . . always attended by such characteristic features,''
and how it comes that even the more minute ' ' stratigraph-
ical subdivisions extend over the whole globe'' (Vol. 1,
p. 8), he says that **if we could assemble in one brilliant
tribunal the most famous masters of our science, and could
lay this question of the student before them, I doubt
whether the reply would be unanimous, I do not even
know whether it would be definite."

And he closes by acknowledging that if the student
were to seek an answer to this great problem in **The
Face of the Earth," ^*he would not find in it an answer
to his question/' (Vol. 1, p. 15.)

But how easily this ''remarkable fact" is explained
when we once realize that the geological series of life has
no time value whatever, but simply represents an old-time
taxonomic series! That its terminology has proved to be
universally applicable is the most natural thing in the
world; while the fact that certain formations comprising
the lower types of life are to be found all over the world
is also just what we should expect from the almost uni-
versal extension of similar forms of life .to-day.

A great deal has been written of late regarding the
antiquity of Man in Europe, the more interesting part of
it dealing with the large number of drawings that have been
found on the walls of caves in numerous places in Southern
Europe. But the author has not felt like materially re-
vising his argument on this point in order to embody these
more recent discoveries, for his confidence in the real
antiquity of most if not all of them has grown steadily
less with the passing years, and like the artificial distinc-
tions made in glacial geology, the following up of the
results of such subjective methods becomes a weariness
of the flesh. When every layer in a sand-bank calls for a
new age, and every peculiarity on a skull or a femur de-
mands a new Latin name to characterize the particular
species of the genus Homo represented, it would seem as if
pseudo-scientific speculation could not well go much further;
but until something more substantia) is accomplished in the

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

10 Preface

way of discovering human remains, it has seemed best to
leave the argument as first written. Some day we may
discover something regarding the men of that ancient world
that will make it worth while to rewrite this part also.

The first chapter has been wholly rewritten, in order
to make the rather intricate matter of the a priori argu-
ment clearer to the general reader. The part of the
Appendix dealing with the subject of Creation has also
been rewritten and strengthened, as what was said on
this point in the first edition was entirely too timid and
weak in the light of the logic of the preceding argument;
for if the scientific induction from Parts One and Two be
sound, a literal Creation, such as Christianity teaches, is
the only possible conclusion of a rational mind.

With the firm conviction that the night of cosmological
speculation has nearly passed, and that the day of true
inductive geology is about to dawn, this little work is sent
forth with the request that its readers will view charitably
the mistakes and shortcomings that can scarcely be avoided
in a pioneer work like this, which attempts to reconstruct
so comprehensive and so highly developed a science .as
geology.

The Author.

Loma Linda, California, January, 1913,

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

INTRODUCTION

During the last quarter of a century or so, all the physical
and biological sciences have experienced a most astonishing
development. In most of them the rapidly accumulating
discoveries have necessitated a readjustment or even the
complete abandonment of long-cherished theories to make
room for these troops of newly discovered facts. For as
one of our leading physicists has remarked, ''Directly a
fact refuses to be pigeonholed, and will not be explained
on theoretical grounds, the theory must go, or it must be

^ revised to admit the new fact." (Sir William Crookes,
** Living Age,'' Vol. 238, p. 318.) In other words, facts
must always have the right of way over theory. And in
any healthy science, the fundamental theories are always
kept well adjusted to all the new discoveries j for when-
ever this is not done, a science soon gets in a comatose
.condition. But why is it that for nearly a century geology
alone has never revised its fundamental theories? Is it a
remarkable instance of perfection from the beginning, or
is it a case of arrested development?

Geology is often spoken of as one of the youngest of
the sciences. This is a mistake ; for as Zittel has shown,
some of the most fundamental theories of the science were

"^ well formulated long before the most essential facts in the
related sciences were known. Thus the theories of the
igneous origin of the crystalline rocks ''had been laid
without the assistance of chemistry,'' and before anything
was known of the microscopic structure of these rocks.
("History of Geology and Palaeofitology, " pp. 327, 341.)
And in the same w^ay the whole series of fossil plants and
animals had been blocked off and even the details pretty
well fixed previous to 1820, or before anything of impor-
tance was known of any class of living animals save
Mammals. (Id., pp. 128-137.) But is it not incredible that
this science, the one above all others dependent upon the

Digitized by VjOOQIC

12 Introduction

results of the other sciences both physical and biological,
should thus by some happy chance spring into existence
full-grown long in advance . of the others, and never need
any adjustment or revision thereafter?

I do not for a moment wish to intimate that during all
this period geology has made no advancement, or that no
important discoveries have been made. There have been
plenty of such discoveries. And there is just where the
trouble comes; for thousands of facts have accumulated,
but there have been no pigeonholes to accommodate them.
If the theoretical part of the science had been kept adjusted
to these new facts as fast as they were discovered, there
would not now be this urgent need of completely reforming
the science — a reform that seems to many like a revolution,
though it might have been accomplished gradually in a
peaceful manner. But the theoretical part of this science
has proved so inelastic, so incapable of adjustment, that it
seems as if nothing but the violence of a complete recon-
struction can now provide room for these new facts to
which admittance into the old system has been refused,
and for which no pigeonholes have ever been provided.

But I think that I realize the seriousness of the task
here suggested, and that an attempt to reconstruct the whole
basis of geological theory must appear to many people like
a tilt against a windmill. And no doubt a bald summary
of my general conclusions, if given here at the beginning,
may deter many a prospective reader from any further
examination of this book. And yet at this imminent risk
of thus cutting off these inquirers, I think I must, in
justice to those who may persist in reading further, give a
brief summary of the argument to be found in the fol-
lowing pages.

Darwinism as a part, a minor part, of the general evolu-
tion theory, rests logically and historically on the suc-
cession-of-life idea as taught by geology. If there has
actually been this succession of life on the globe in a very
definite order, then some form of genetic connection between
these successive types is the intuitive conclusion of every
thinking mind, even though it may prove impossible to
recover the connecting-links. But if there is absolutely

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Introduction 13

no evidence in either logic or objective fact that certain
types of life are intrinsically older than others; in other
words, if this succession of life is not an actual scientific
fact capable of the clearest proof; then Darwinism or any
other form of biological evolution can have no more scien-
tific value than the vagaries of the old Greeks; in short,
from the view-point of true inductive science, it would
necessarily be a gigantic blunder, historically scarce second
to the Ptolemaic astronomy.

In Part One the writer has examined critically this
succession-of-life theory. It is improper to speak of my
argument as destructive, for in neither the history nor the
logic of that theory has there ever been any real con-
structive argument to be thus destroyed. My argument is
essentially an exposure; and I am confident that few, after
carefully reading the following pages, will continue to
think that geology has really proved certain kinds of fossils
to be older than others, or that * ' historicaP ' or stratigraph-
ical geology as commonly taught is an inductive science in
any proper sense of the word.

In Part Two I have brought forward some of the chief
facts bearing on the doctrine of uniformity. The latter
has had at least some excuse for existence in the theory of
the science, as it is quite the logical and scientific thing
to assume as a working theory that natural processes and
change3 took place in the past as they are now observed
to take place, until we find positive evidence to the contrary.
The works of Suess and Howorth are models of transparent
logic, and have furnished us a part at least of this positive
evidence to the contrary, dealing with ''the great dividing
line'' between the ancient deposits and the modern ones;
and taken together they have demonstrated conclusively and
for all time that there is nothing now going on in our
modern world at all explanatory of even the last and least
of these great geological changes of the past. But it is
obvious that, with the facts before us which are enumerated
in Part Two, most of which have been before the world for
half a century or more, there would never have been any
question at all regarding the manner in which these as-
tonishing changes must have taken place, if the succession-

Digitized by VjOOQIC

14 Introduction

of-life theory had not precluded a candid examination of
the fossil world as a unit by throwing it into an artificial
perspective, where, instead of looking at this fossil world as
a whole, we have been taught to view these alleged successive
assemblages of life forms arranged one after another in
single file; and by these methods there has never yet been
any truly inductive or scientific examination of the facts of
palaeontology in their entirety. But the facts enumerated
in Part Two, namely, (1) the abnormal character of most
of the fossiliferous deposits, (2) the sudden, world-wide
change of climate they record, (3) the marked degeneration
in all the organic forms in passing from the older to the
modern world, together with (4) the great outstanding
fact that human beings, with thousands of other living
species of animals and plants, have at this great world-
crisis left their fossils in the rocks all over the globe, —
these facts, I say, when looked at together as a cumulative
argument, prove beyond a possible doubt that our once
magnificently stocked and climated world met with a tre-
mendous catastrophe some thousands of years ago, before
the dawn of history; and they confirm in a marvelous way
the Biblical record of a universal Deluge, which has so
burned itself into the memory of the race that the tradi-
tion of it survives among every race on earth.

I have not attempted to decide even approximately how
long ago this great world catastrophe took place. Many
natural phenomena considered singly would seem to indicate
that it must have been a very long time ago; but we can
not hope to settle such a matter in a scientific way, and the
sad experience of former blunders ought to teach us modesty
and caution. All that we can say with absolute positive-
ness is that it occurred since Man appeared on earth.
Archaeology, history, and Bible chronology may furnish us
an approximate date; but no method hitherto devised of
reading time from the rocks has much scientific value.

As for the origin of the living things that existed before
that event, we can nevermore evade the tremendous fact
of a literal Creation^ since modern science has forever out-
grown the idea of spontaneous generation, and in the light
of the facts here brought out there is absolutely nothing

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Introduction 15

■». ",
upon which to build a scheme of evolution, since inductive
geology is utterly unable to show that certain types of life
originated before others. With the myth of a life succession
dissipated once and forever, the world to-day stands face
to face with Creation as the direct act of the infinite God,

However, it would be a very hasty and superficial view
of the matter that would see in all this the ruin or the
disorganization of the science of geology. For what is here
brought out does not by any means demand that the present
orderly arrangement of the fossils, built up with so much
conscientious care, should be disarranged or set aside. For
we can easily work with and speak of these fossil forms
without being in any way biased or embarrassed by the
traditional age-values so long associated wdth them. Let
the geological series stand by all means. It is a good
taxonomic or classification series of that ancient world,
and will be indispensable in the future reconstruction of
geology on a truly scientific or inductive basis, by which
reconstruction only may we hope to reproduce a more or
less faithful picture of that marvelous world which man
once beheld, but whose ruins now lie buried deep beneath
our feet.

With regard to the geological names of formations, I
have not ventured to suggest any changes, though a few such
changes must necessarily come in the course of time. Btit
by Silurian, Devonian, Triassic, etc., we of course only
mean rocks containing certain kinds of fossils; and as most
of the names of systems and groups are geographical in
origin, they are per se neutral as to theory, and will doubt-
less endure the test of time. In this respect they conform
to the standard set by Huxley when he demands names
expressing merely *' similarity of serial relation, and ex-
cluding the notion of time altogether.'' The names of
the series, *' Palaeozoic, ' ' * ' Mesozoic, ' ' and ^^'Csenozoic,'' as
well as the name ^ * Tertiary, ' ' are decidedly objectionable
as embalming the fancies of a discarded hypothesis, and
will probably have to give place to others that express no
theory as to age or origin. But I have . retained them here,
as Dana says of ** Tertiary," '* simply because of the con-
venience of continuing an accepted name.'' Chemistry and

Digitized by VjOOQIC

16 Introduction

astronomy still carry many names surviving i'rom the old
fooleries of alchemy and astrology, and perhaps geology
can hardly expect to fare much better.

Some may object that the present work is too exclusively
critical and destructive. But when an objectionable building
already occupies the ground, some destructive work is
necessary before a better structure can be erected in its
place. This work of destruction is never a pleasant task,
and the writer sincerely wishes that in the present instance
the clearing of the ground had fallen to the lot of some
one else. He is especially sorry that in the present incom-
plete state of the reconstructed science it is not possible
to give a complete statement of formal inductive geology.
But so far as the present work is constructive, there is one
virtue that can rightly be claimed for it. It is at least an
honest effort to study the foundation facts of geology from
the inductive standpoint; and whether or not the author has
succeeded in outlining a true inductive method, it is, so
far as he knows, the only work of modern times in the
English or any other language which does not treat the
science of geology more or less as a cosmogony.

That such a statement is possible is, I think, sufficient
to justify me in giving the volume to the public. It
would seem as if the twentieth century could afford at least
one book on geology built up from the present instead of
being postulated from the past.

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Contents

PAGE

Preface - 7

Introduction 11

PART ONE

Criticism

CHAPTER

I. The Modern Onion-Coat Theory - - - 21

II. History op the Idea 40

III. Fact Number One 59

IV. Fact Number Two 72

V. Turned Upside Down ; Fact Number Three - 79

VI. Fact Number Four 112

VII. Extinct Species - 125

VIII. Skipping; Fact Number Five - - - 145

PART TWO

Additional Facts for the Basis of a True Induction

IX. Graveyards 171

X. Change of Climate 195

XI. Degeneration .-.-.. 206

XII. Fossil Men .-....- 214

XIII. Scientific Methods 238

Appendix 253

17
2 — Geology

Digit^ed by VjOOQ IC

Illustrations

Frontispiece
. 20

60
. 80

88
. 89

89
- 90

Map of Portion of Rocky Mountains

Table of Stratified Bocks, with Typical Fossils

Geological Classifications ......

Folded Rocks, Maryland ......

Cambrian Limestone Resting on Cretaceous Shale

Section along South Fork of Ghost River

Crow's Nest Mountain, Alberta .....

Chief Mountain, Lewis Range, Montana

Map of Great Plains and Front Ranges, Northwest Montana

Goathaunt, Lewis Range ........ 94

Mount Rundle, Banff, Alberta 96

Mount Gould, Lewis Range, Montana ...... 98

North Side of Swift Current Valley, Near Altyn, Montana . . 99

South Side of the Segnes Pass, Glarus, Switzerland . . . 102
Map of Glarus and Vicinity, Switzerland . . . . .106

Linthal, Canton of Glarus, Switzerland ...... 108

The Matterhorn, Canton of Valais, Switzerland . . . . 110

Folded Shale from Hot Springs, North Carolina .... 114

The Upside-Down Conditions in Glarus as Variously Explained . 116

Canon of the Colorado River ....... 118

Nineteen Specimens of Purpura Lapilltis L., Great Britain . 134

Three Stages in the Growth of Pteroceras Eugosum Sowb., E. Indies 142
Port Jackson Shark . . . . . .153

A, Neoceratodus Forsteri, Queensland; B, Protopterus Annectens,

Gambia; C, Lepidosiren Paradoxa, Paraguay .... 154

Table to Indicate Distribution of Sponges in Time . . . 156

Shells of Foraminifera ........ 158

A Modern Crinoid ......... 160

Pleurotomaria Adansoniana Cr. and F., Tobago .... 162

Ehynchonella Boueti (Cornbrash) ...... 184

Terehratula Sella (Lower Greensand) . . . . . .185

Sir Charles Lyell 192

James Hutton .......... 193

Engraving of a Mammoth . . . . . . 217

Relative Chronology of the Stone Age ...... 220

Unfinished Polychrome Painting of Two Reindeer . . . 224

Red Drawing of Rhinoceros Tiehorhinus ..... 225

Digitized by

Google

PART ONE

CRITICISM

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

GROUP

Quaternary

Tertiary

or
CsBnoxoic

STRATA

Secondary

or
Mesozoic

Primary

or
Pal890zolc

and
Eozoic

SYSTEM
13. Recent

12. PUocene f^^jSg^J

11. Miocene

10. Eocene

TYPICAL FOSSILS

Irish Elk

Mastodon

1. Univalve (Cerithium)

2. Conifer (Sequoia)

1. Nummulite

2. Univalve (Natica)

1. Pearl Mussel
(Inoceramtis)

2. Ammonite, new form
(Turrilitea)

3. Bivalve (Pecten)

4. Ammonite, new form
(Hamites)

1. Bivalve (Pholadomya)

2. Bivalve (Trigonia)

3. Oycad (Mantellia)

4. Univalve (Nerincea)

1. Fish-lizard
(Ichthyoeaur)

2. Ammonite

3. Sea-lily (ETuyrinus)

4. Footprints of Laby-
rinthodon

1. Bivalve (BakeweUia)
Lampshell (Producttis)
Ganoid (PaloBoniscus)

1. Precursors of Ammon-
ites (Gonialite)

2. Club-moss (Lepido-
dendron)

3. Horsetail Plants
(Calamite)

Ganoid Fish

(Pterichthya)

Lamp
shells

fl. Str^
< 2. Lin
1 3. Per.

Strophomena
Lingula
Pentdmerus
Trilobite 4. Calymene

Seaweed (Oldhamia)

Eozoon Canadense ( ? )

1. Archaean ...
Fig. 2 — table OF STRATIFIED ROCKS, WITH TYPICAL FOSSILS

Digitized by

Google

CHAPTER I

The Modern Onion-Coat Theory

Geology deals with the past history of the globe,
and the changes that have taken place upon it. The
records upon which we must depend for reading this
history are the rocks and their fossil contents. A
correct interpretation of this rocky record must fur-
nish us with a faithful picture of what has taken
place on the globe since life has been upon it. Such
a study, pursued according to inductive methods of
investigation and correct principles of logic, must
constitute the true science of geology.

But the universal modern method in geology, as
taught in our colleges and universities, is to start
with an imaginary beginning of things, say with
\ our earth a cooling globe, and by a pseudo-scientific
method attempt to describe the order of the sub-
sequent events down to our day. The criticism of
this as violating the fundamental principles of in-
ductive science, together with suggestions as to the
reconstruction of a truly scientific method of geolog-
ical research, will be reserved for a subsequent chap-
ter (chapter 13, ^^ Scientific Methods''). Here we
must confine ourselves to the abstract idea of the
successive ages themselves, which constitute so much
of geology as currently taught, and consider whether

(21)

Digitized by VjOOQIC

22 The Fundamentals of Geology

or not the details of such an idea are scientifically
conceivable, whether the general fact of there having
been these successive ages of particular life forms is
proved or merely assumed, and what bearing this
idea has upon subsequent methods of scientific study.

First we must note how the age of any newly dis-
covered deposit is determined by modern geologists.

On coming to any region that has not yet been
examined and described, the investigator first de-
termines the stratigraphical relationship of the vari-
ous strata, following them as far as possible, noting
any changes in the beds themselves, and especially
in their fossil contents. These strata are then classi-
fied off into groups, called formations, indicating
successive ages; but the names given them are at
first merely local geographical names, and have but
a local or note-book value, until the fossils they con-
tain have been carefully compared with those of other
regions. When this is done, the local names may
give place to others more generally accepted else-
where, and thus these beds are assigned a definite
place in the long series of successive ages, and we
are confidently informed of the particular period of
geological history at which they were formed.

Our object now is to determine whether this
method of fixing the age of a rock deposit is in all
respects a scientific one, conformable in all essentials
to the methods pursued in other sciences, such as
physics, chemistry, and astronomy. If we can be
sure that there has been this succession of life on
the globe, if we can be certain of just what types

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

The Modern Onion-Coat Theory 23

of life only were in existence at certain periods, and
that other types of life were not then in existence,
we may feel sure of the age of a newly discovered
rock deposit by comparing its fossil contents with
those of this series as already determined. But how
did scientists first determine this order of successive
life forms? Or how may we now prove in logical,
scientific fashion that there has actually been this
succession of life on the globe in a particular order I
To illustrate the matter, How are we to prove that
when the Cambrian forms were existing in one lo-
cality, let us say New York, this assemblage of plants
and animals must have prevailed everywhere on earth,
or at least that no other higher types, such as Verte-
brates, or Mammals, or men, were then in existence
anywhere else I

At the present time, in our modem lakes, seas,
and oceans, samples of every grade of life are be-
ing buried for fossilization in different localities, —
Worms, MoUusks, Crustaceans, Insects, Reptiles, Am-
phibians, Fishes, Mammals, and human beings, all
are now being made candidates for fossilization. How
are we to prove in a scientific way that this was
not always the case! How can we, by scientific
methods, get back of the time when all these forms
of life existed contemporaneously! How can we,
except by assuming a supernatural knowledge of the
past, fix on a time when only a few of the lower
forms existed on the globe? The current geological
theories say that there was such a time, and the
whole science as commonly taught, and indeed the

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

24 The Fundamentals of Geology

whole scheme of biological evolution, rest on the sup-
position that such was the case. But how are we
to prove such a statement in scientific fashion, or
justify it in the light of reason as an intelligent
and reasonable ideal

To some it may seem like a very extravagant
statement to say that in the whole field of scientific
study there is to-day nothing else of such tremendous
importance and far-reaching consequences as is the
determination whether these successive ages are
scientific fact or mere speculation. But when we
remember that all the subsequent facts of geology
gather themselves about this idea, and that the whole
scheme of biological evolution is built up on these
successive ages, such a statement of the importance
of this problem will appear natural and reasonable.

From an examination of the literature of geology
and palaeontology during the last century or so, it
will be seen that very few writers have thought
enough along this line to leave us ten sentences
upon the subject; while only four, Spencer, Huxley,
Nicholson, and Suess, with possibly one or two
others, have written anything of importance or have
even attempted to sound the logical bottom of the
problem. It will be convenient to consider what
each of these men has said upon the subject.

Herbert Spencer' did not seem to think the way
in which this idea has been built up a very praise-
worthy example of the methods to be pursued in
natural science. ^

^ * ^ Illogical Geology ; Illustrations of Universal Progress, ' ' pp. 329-
380; D. Appleton & Co., 1890.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

The Modern Onion-Coat Theory 25

He starts out with Werner, of Neptunian fame,
and shows that the latter 's matu idea of the rocks
always succeeding one another over the whole globe
like the coats of an onion was ''untenable if ana-
lyzed,** and ''physically absurd,** for among other
things it is incomprehensible that these very different
v^ kinds of rocks could have been precipitated one after
another by the same "chaotic menstruum.'*

But he then proceeds to show that the science is
"still swayed by the crude hypotheses it set out with;
so that even now, old doctrines that are abandoned
as untenable in theory, continue in practise to mold
the ideas of geologists, and to foster sundry beliefs
that are logically indefensible.'*

Werner had taken for his data the way in which
the rocks happened to occur in "a narrow district
, of Germany," and had at once jumped to the con-
tusion that they must always occur in this relative
order over the entire globe. "Thus on a very iu-
complete acquaintance with a thousandth part of
the earth's crust, he based a sweeping generalization
applying to the whole of it."

Werner classified the rocks according to their min-
eral characters; but when the fossils were taken as
the prime test of age, the "original nomenclature of
periods and formations," says Spencer, kept alive
the original idea of complete envelopes encircling the
whole globe one outside another like the coats of an
onion. So that now, instead of Werner's successive
ageg of sandstone making or limestone making, and
successive suites of these rocks, we have successive

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

26 The Fundamentals of Geology

ages of various types of life, with successive systems
or ''groups of formations which everywhere succeed
each other in a given order, and are severally every-
where of the same age. Though it may not be as-
serted that these successive systems are universal, yet
it seems to be tacitly assumed that they are so. , , ,
Though, probably, no competent geologist would con-
tend that the European classification of strata is ap-
plicable to the globe as a whole, yet most, if not all
geologists, write as though it were so,"

Spencer then goes on to show how dogmatic and
unscientific it is to say that when the Carboniferous
flora, for example, existed in some localities, this type
of life and this only must have enveloped the world.

''Now this belief," he says, "that geologic 'sys-
tems' are universal, is quite as untenable as the other.
It is just as absurd when considered a priori; and it
is equally inconsistent with the facts," for all such
systems of similar life forms must in olden time have
been of merely ^Hocal origin/' just as they are now.
In other words, it is folly to claim to have a scien-
tific knowledge of a time in the remote past when
there were not floral and faunal provinces and dis-
tricts, as there are to-day, one type of life existing
in one locality, while other and totally different kinds
existed somewhere else. Though Spencer does not
go thus far, it evidently implies a supernatural knowl-
edge of the past to affirm, as the life succession theory
does, that such unnatural conditions ever prevailed.
But the merest tyro in logic can see that the whole
scheme of evolution is moonshine, if we find out that

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

The Modern Onion-Coat Theory 27

these geological periods did not have a real objective
reality; if, for example, when the Cambrian animals
were alive, other very different forms, such as Dev-
onian, or Cretaceous, or Eocene, were also alive in
other localities, perhaps on the other side of the
globe.

Then, after quoting from Lyell a strong protest
against the old fancy that only certain types of sand-
stone and marl were made at certain epochs, Spencer
proceeds :

Nevertheless, while in this and numerous passages of like
implication, Sir C. Lyell protests against the bias here il-
lustrated, he seems himself not completely free from it.
Though he utterly rejects the old hypothesis that all over
the earth the same continuous strata he upon each other in
regular order, like the coats of an onion, he still writes as
though geologic ^* systems'' do thus succeed each other. A
reader of his/' Manual'' would certainly suppose him to
believe, that the Primary epoch ended, and the Secondary
epoch commenced, all over the world at the same time. . . .
Must we not say that though the onion-coat hypothesis is dead,
\^ its spirit is traceable, under a transcendental form, even in
the conclusions of its antagonists?

The conclusion thus rather timidly put forward
is absolutely unavoidable. For if we are ashamed
of this modern form of the onion-coat theory, namely,
that fossiliferous groups of life were successively uni-
versal Qver the globe, we can only disclaim it by ad-
mitting in full the alternative of geographical prov-
inces and districts, or in other words, admitting that
very diverse types were living contemporaneously in
the oldest period of which we have scientific knowl-
edge, just as we find them doing to-day. And then,

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

28 The Fundamentals of Geology

how are we to set limits to the possible diversity of
these contemporary forms? But the current system
of geology denies that very diverse types could have
been living contemporaneously in the long ago; hence
we must own that we have this modern form of the
onion-coat theory, a real biological onion-coat theory,
taught as science in practically every college and uni-
versity throughout the civilized world.

Spencer then examines at considerable length the
kindred idea that the same or similar species '4ived
in all parts of the earth at the same time." ''This
theory," he says, ''is scarcely more tenable than the
other."

He then shows how in some localities there are
now forming Coral deposits, in some places Chalk,
and in others beds of MoUusks; while in still other
places entirely different forms of life are existing.
In fact, each zone or depth of the ocean has its
particular type of life, just as successive altitudes
have on the sides of a mountain; and it is a dog-
matic and arbitrary assumption to say that such con-
ditions have not existed in the past, or to limit in
any way the diverse varieties of life that may then
have coexisted in widely separated localities.

On our own coasts, the marine remains found a few miles
from shore, in banks where Pish congregate, are different from
those found close to the shore, where only littoral species
flourish. A large proportion of aquatic creatures have struc-
tures that do not admit of f ossilization ; while of the rest, the
great majority are destroyed, when dead, by the various kinds
of scavengers that creep among the rocks and weeds. So that
no one deposit near our shores can ♦contain anything like a

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

The Modern Onion-Coat Theory 29

true representation of the fauna of the surrounding sea ; much
less of the coexisting faunas of other seas in the same latitude ;
and still less of the faunas of seas in distant latitudes. Were
it not that the assertion seems needful, it would be almost
absurd to say that the organic remains now being buried in
the Dogger Bank can tell us next to nothing about the Fish,
Crustaceans, MoUusks, and Corals that are now being buried
in the Bay of Bengal.

y*^ Herbert Spencer entitled his essay, '* Illogical Ge-
ology," and he evidently found it difficult to keep
within the bounds of parliamentary language when
speaking of the absurd and vicious reasoning at the
very basis of the whole current geological theory;
for, unlike the other physical sciences, the great lead-
ing ideas of geology, such as uniformity, the succes-
sion of life, etc., are not generalizations framed from
the whole series or group of observed facts, but are
really dogmatic statements supposed to be axiomatic,
or at the most very hasty conclusions based on wholly
insufficient data, like that of Werner in his ''narrow
district of Germany." Sir Henry Howorth* has well
expressed the urgent need there is of a complete re-
construction of geological theory:

It is a singular and a notable fact, that while most other
branches of science have emancipated themselves from the
trammels of metaphysical reasoning, the science of geology
still remains imprisoned in a priori theories.

Evidently this author had a clear view of the
fundamental difference between geology as it is, and
geology as it ought to be; between subjective specu-
lations based on a priori reasonings about an imagi-
nary beginning of things, and real inductive science.

* ({

The Glacial NightmMa and the Flood," Preface 7.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

30 llie Fundamentals of Geology

the result of an indisputable generalization from the
sum total of observed facts. The former is the scho-
lastic method, the latter the Baconian method; and
nothing further is needed to show what an anach-
ronism the current cosmological geology is among
the group of regenerated modern sciences — a fossil
science, an out-of-date method, a survival of a by-
gone age.

But Huxley' also has left us some remarks along
the same line which are almost equally helpful in
showing the essential absurdity of the assumption
that when one type of life was living and being bur-
ied in one locality another and very diverse type
could not have been flourishing in other distant lo-
calities, — in other words, the absurdity of this mod-
ern onion-coat theory.

This is how he expresses it:

All competent authorities will probably assent to the
proposition that physical geology does not enable us in any
way to reply to this question: Were the British Cretaceous
rocks deposited at the same time as those of India, or were
they a million of years younger, or a million of years older?

All thai geology can prove is local order of succession.
It is mathematically certain that, in any given vertical linear
section of an undisturbed series of sedimentary deposits, the
bed which lies lowest is the oldest. In many other vertical
linear sections of the same series, of course corresponding beds
will occur in a similar order [ ?] ; but, however great may be
the probability, no man can say with absolute certainty that
the beds in the two sections were synchronously deposited. For
areas of moderate extent, it is doubtless true that no practical
evil is likely to result from assuming the corresponding beds
to be synchronous or strictly contemporaneous ; and there are

*' ^ Discourses Biological and Geological," pp. 279-288.

Digitized by VjOOQIC

The Modern Onion-Goat Theory 31

multitudes of accessory circumstances which may fully justify
the assumption of such synchrony. But the moment the
geologist has to deal with large areas, or with completely
separated deposits, the mischief of confounding that ''homo-
taxis'' or similarity of arrangement which can be demon-
strated, with ** synchrony" or identity of date for which there
is not a shadow of proof, under the one common term of
''contemporaneity/' becomes incalculable, and proves the con-
stant source of gratuitous speculations.

Yet even so clear a thinker as Huxley usually
was, does not seem to have had more than a twilight
vision of the real questions involved in this modern
onion-coat theory. For it is not a question of whether
the British Cretaceous fossils lived contemporane-
ously with the Cretaceous of India. No doubt they
did ; for the human mind instinctively believes that
representatives of the same types of life, no matter
how distant geographically, must have been con-
nected in time and must have been related to one
another by descent. But it is really the converse
of this proposition that needs to be critically ex-
amined; namely, the assumed denial that very dis-
similar forms in England or India or America were
also contemporaneous. The doctrine of Creation
says that they were thus contemporary, while the
theory of successive ages denies it; for it is useless
to talk about distinct geological ages, if dissimilar
types were contemporary in the long ago as they
are to-day.

Huxley, indeed, seems to have caught a glimpse
of the absurdity of denying that there must have
been zoological provinces in the long ago, for he says :

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

32 The Fundamentals of Geology

A Devonian fauna and flora in the British Islands may
have been contemporaneous with Silurian life in North Amer-
ica, and with a Carboniferous fauna and flora in Africa.
Geographical provinces and zones may have been as distinctly
marked in the Palceozoic epoch as at present.

Certainly; but if this be true, it is equally cer-
tain that the Carboniferous flora of Pennsylvania may
have been contemporaneous alike with the Creta-
ceous flora of British Columbia and the Tertiary flora
of Germany and Australia. But in that case what
becomes of this succession of life which for nearly
a century has been the pole-star of all the other bio-
logical sciences — I might almost say of the his-
torical and theological as well?

Must it not be admitted that in any system of
clear thinking this whole idea of there having really
been a time when only a certain limited number of
life forms were in existence, and these more or less
universally distributed over the whole globe, is not
only not proved by scientific methods, but that it is
essentially unprovable and absurd?

Huxley, in point of fact, admits this, though he
goes right on with his scheme of evolution, just as
if he never thought of the logical consequences in-
volved. His words are:

In the present condition of our knowledge and of our
methods (sic) one verdict — ^'not proven and not provable" —
must be recorded against all grand hypotheses of the palaeon-
tologist respecting the general succession of life on the globe.

These remarks of Huxley's, indeed, were so near
to the whole truth of the matter that it almost seemed
as if geology would follow the example of the other

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

The Modern Onion-Coat Theory 33

sciences by emancipating itself from the trammels
of metaphysical speculation, and donning the garb
of demonstrated fact; but it appears that his criti-
cisms only served to awaken the theorizers long
enough to use this new light about zoological prov-
inces and districts to help them out of some minor
puzzles into which their theory had led them; for
outside of a few admiring references to this idea of
**hpmotaxis," subsequent writers have seen in them
nothing suggestive of the miserable logic on which
the whole theory of successive ages, and thus the
evolution doctrine also, has been built up.

Prof. H. AUeyne Nicholson (** Manual of Palaeon-
tology," Greneral Introduction, pp. 47, 52, 3d ed.)
is almost the only other writer who has considered it
worth while to try to defend this doctrine of suc-
cessive ages; and we must next note some of his
remarks illustrating how near this idea of project-
ing our modern conditions of geographical distribu-
tion back into the past came to wrecking the inherited
onion-coat theory, the spirit of which, Spencer says,
is still traceable, ''under a transcendental form, even
in the conclusions of its antagonists."

''When it had been clearly established," says
Nicholson, "that particular groups of strata in Eu-
rope were characterized by particular assemblages of
animals and plants, it was, not unnaturally, con-
cluded that similar or identical assemblages of or-
ganisms would be found to characterize correspond-
ing groups of strata all over the world. This led to
the idea that the successive faunae and florae ob-

3 — Geology

Digitized by VjOOQIC

34 The Fundamentals of Geology

servable in the area first examined had been uni-
versally distributed over the whole globe [that is,
the onion-coat theory was still retained] ; from which
followed the old catastrophic view that the close of
each geological period had been signalized by a
more or less complete extinction of the animals and
plants then in existence, and that a new fauna and
flora had been introduced at the commencement of
each succeeding period."
He continues:

It is, however, now universally admitted that in nature
the chronological succession of rocks, as determined by fossil
remains, is local and not universal, in the sense that the pre-
cise order of phenomena must necessarily have differed in
different regions. That this must be so is proved by the
existence at the present day of *' zoological provinces"; by
the fact that dry land and sea must always have existed since
the beginning of Palaeozoic time at any rate, and that sedi-
mentation can, therefore, never have been universal; and by
the certainty that the sedimentary deposits now in process
of formation, and therefore necessarily coeval, contain the
remains of dissimilar groups of animals and plants-
Page after page is devoted by this author to en-
larging on this principle of true science, which teaches
us that dissimilar groups of life are now coexisting
in separated localities, and that if we hold fast to
real experience, and project our modern conditions
of geographical distribution back into the past until
we find positive evidence of the contrary, we can
not attain to any scientific knowledge of a time ivhen
this principle ought not to hold good; though it is
one of the most amazing things in the whole history
of natural science to see how neither Nicholson, nor

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

The Modern Onion-Coat Theory 35

Huxley, nor Spencer, nor any of their thousands of
followers, have realized how completely this prin-
ciple removes the whole foundation on which rests
the idea of relative time value, which still persists in
assuring us that when a Carboniferous group was
existing here," a Cambrian group could not have been
existing over there, and Cretaceous and Tertiary
groups somewhere else. That an assumption of such
a supernatural knowledge of the past, totally at vari-
ance with our modern knowledge of plant and animal
distribution, still flaunts itself in our eyes from every
text-book professing to deal with the earth's early
history, is an anachronism almost passing belief.
Some day, when this science is reconstructed by being
built up on inductive principles from the present
instead of being postulated from the past, this part
of the history of natural science will make a most
amazing story for our posterity.
\ ''The Face of the Earth" (Oxford, 1904-1909), by

Eduard Suess, of Vienna, is acknowledged by all to
indicate the high-water mark in geological literature.
In this work several references are made to the
problem of what these geological classifications really
mean, and finally this author leaves it unsolved, as
one of the largest tasks he must bequeath to the next
generation of investigators.

Three or four times he alludes to ' ' the remark-
able fact that it has been found possible to employ
the same terminology to distinguish the sedimentary
formations in all parts of the world." (Vol. 2, p.
540.) But it is quite obvious that this is only the

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

36 The Fundamentals of Geology

modern aspect of the onion-coat theory in what Spen-
cer calls its 'transcendental'' form; and it is equally
obvious that, if we look upon the geological series of
life forms as having no intrinsic time value what-
ever, but as being only an old-time taxonomic series
of that ancient world, as will appear later, this '' re-
markable fact," which seems such a puzzle to this
accomplished scientist, becomes as clear as sunlight,
and immediately falls into its natural place in a
scheme of true inductive geology.

In his picturesque way Suess puts one of the
characteristic features of this modern onion-coat
theory in the form of a question, as to how the
Silurian formation, one of ''the very earliest of them
all," "recurs in parts of the earth so widely removed
from one another — from Lake Ladoga to the Argen-
tine Andes, and from Arctic America to Australia —
always attended by such characteristic features,"
and how it happens ' ' that particular horizons of vari-
ous ages may be compared to or distinguished from
other horizons over such large areas, that in fact
these stratigraphical subdivisions extend over the
whole globe." (Vol. 1, p. 8.)

As already remarked, he considers this one of the
great unsolved problems of the science, for he says
that "if we could assemble in one brilliant tribunal
the most famous masters of our science, and could
lay this question of the student before them, I doubt
whether the reply would be unanimous, I do not even
know if it would be definite." (Id.)

Of course from the standpoint of current theory

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

The Modern Onion-Coat Theory 37

this question must ever remain without explanation;
for the one thought pervading this whole work of
Professor Suess is that absolutely nothing in the
direction of an exchange of ocean and dry land is
now going on, and thus we have no modern analogies
to explain how those great universal ^'transgres-
sions" of the ocean took place in the past, — in other
words, uniformitarianism is now found to be bank-
rupt as an explanation of the past geological changes.
But how simple this problem becomes, how natural
this whole phenomenon appears, when we look upon
the geological series as only an old-tijne taxonomic
\^ series of a complete world all living contemporane-
ously together!

But Professor Suess concludes the discussion of
this subject by the very explicit statement that if
one were to seek an answer to this problem in ''The
Face of the Earth," "^e would not find in it an
answer to his question.'' (Vol. 1, p. 15.)

It may be worth while to gather into concise form
the facts we have learned thus far:

1. The geological ages depend wholly upon the
types of life supposed to have flourished at these
various periods; and the age of a rock is determined
by its contained or associated fossils.

2. Spencer not only saw the absurdity of Wer-
ner's onion-coat theory, but he blames Lyell and
the other modern geologists for still perpetuating this
absurd idea of the geological formations being uni-
versal over the globe, and says that we now have

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

38 The Fundamentals of Geology

onion-coats of fossiliferous rocks, instead of the old
mineral onion-coats of Werner.

3. Huxley acknowledges that geology can prove
nothing more than local order of succession; that
when we come to deal with large areas, there is
*^not a shadow of proof" for saying that one type
of rock in England was or was not formed at the
same time as other rocks in America or Africa; and
that all the palaeontological notions about the gen-
eral succession of life on the globe are **not proven
and not provable."

4. Nicholson, and indeed all modern geologists,
seem quite ashamed of the onion-coat theory of Wer-
ner, and they try to prove themselves clear of it by
speaking rather timidly of the principle of zoological
provinces and districts, partially admitting that dis-
similar groups of life must have existed contempo-
raneously in the olden time as now, — how dissimilar
they dare not say, for to admit this principle fully
must forever destroy the idea of successive ages of
life. For if we renounce entirely this modern form of
the onion-coat theory, must we not admit that Mam-
mals may have lived on the land while Trilobites
were living in the sea, or that Nummulites may have
been contemporary with the Graptolites, or Oaks,
Beeches, and Birches contemporary with the Lepi-
dodendrons and Sigillaria? And then what will be-
come of the theory of successive ages!

5. Professor Suess seems dazed at the universal
spread not only of the larger groups or formations,
but also of the particular horizons or stratigraphical

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

The Modern Onion-Coat Theory 39

subdivisions; and he remarks with astonishment that
it has been found possible *'to employ the same ter-
minology to distinguish the sedimentary formations
in all parts of the world." He feels very doubtful,
if all the masters of the science were assembled to-
gether and this problem were propounded to them,
whether the reply would be unanimous, or even *' defi-
nite.'' As for himself, he has no explanation.

6. From all this discussion it follows that the
geological ages of successive types of life are not
scientifically established, and have no scientific value.
Hence the Cambrian fossils, for example, can not be
proved to be intrinsically older than the Carbon-
iferous, the Cretaceous, or the Tertiary; in short,
no one kind of fossil can he proved to he really older
than another, or than the human race.

On the other hand, what geology has been deal-
ing with all these years under the name of a *'phy-
logenic" series, turns out to be nothing but an old-
time taxonomic series, buried somehow, and at some
time or times, which must be determined later and
by other considerations. But there is absolutely
nothing in the geological record to forbid our believ-
ing that all these various types of life were created
at one time — though how long ago this beginning
of life may have been, geological science does not
give us the data to determine.

So much, then, for the a priori argument. We
must now look at the history of the idea, and in
subsequent chapters consider the stratigraphical fea-
tures of the theory.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

CHAPTER II

History of the Idea

Among the few stray principles that the future
will probably be able to save from the wreck of
Spencer's philosophy, is the advisability of looking
into the genealogy of an idea. What have been its
surroundings? What is its family history? Does
it come of good stock, or is its family low and not
very respectable?

This is especially true in the case of a scientific
idea, which above all others needs to have a clean
bill of health and a good family record. But, un-
fortunately, the idea we are here considering has a
bad record, very bad in fact; for the whole Family
of Cosmogonies, of which this notion is the only sur-
viving representative, were supposed to have been
banished from the land of science long ago, and were
all reported dead. Some of them had to be executed
by popular ridicule, but most of them died a natural
death, the result of inherited taint, in the latter
part of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth cen-
tury. It is perfectly astonishing how any of the
family could have survived over into the twentieth
century, in the face of such an antecedent record.

For one of the chief traits of the family as a
whole is that of mental disorder of various stages

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

History of the Idea 41

and degrees. Some of them were raving crazy;
others were mild and comparatively harmless, except
that their drivel had so disturbing an effect on scien-
tific investigations that they had to be put out of the
way. It seems such a pity that when this last fellow,
early in life, was up before Doctors Huxley, Spencer,
and- others, for examination, he was not locked up
or put in limbo forthwith. This is especially un-
fortunate, because this survivor of an otherwise ex-
tinct race has since then produced a large family,
some of which, it is true, have already expired, while
the eldest son, Darwinism, was reported in 1901 to be
*'at its last gasp,''" and was even said to have had
its ** tombstone inscription" written a year or two
ago by Von Hartmann of Germany. But the suc-
cession-of-life idea itself, the father of all this brood,
is still certified by those in authority to be healthy
and compos mentis.

The Cosmogony Family is a very ancient one,
running back to the time of Plato and Thales of
Miletus. Indeed, the cuneiform inscriptions of Baby-
lonia seem to indicate that a tribe with very similar
characteristics existed several millenniums before
the Christian era. But discarding all these, the first
men that we need to mention are perhaps Burnet
and Whiston, who knew no other way of arriving
at geological truth than to spin a yarn about how
the world was made. Woodward (1665-1722) seems
to have had a little better sense, and is named along

"^ Nature, Nov. 28, 1901, pp. 76, 77.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

42 The Fundamentals of Geology

with Hooke and John Ray as one of the real founders
of geology.

Unfortunately the brood of Cosmogonists was
not dead, for Moro and de Maillet were at this same
period spinning their fantastic theories about the
origin of things; or as Zittel puts it, ** accepted the
risks of error, and set about explaining the past and
present from the subjective standpoint.'^ (** His-
tory of Geology," p. 23.) This tendency we shall
find to be a birthmark in the family, and it will serve
invariably to identify any of them wherever found.
We must remember this, and apply the test to the
modern survivors.

Buff on (1707-1788) seems to have been really the
founder of the family in the modern form. He is
credited with the sarcastic remark that '* geologists
must feel like the ancient Roman augurs who could
not meet each other without laughing;" though in
view of his fantastic scheme of seven '* epochs," in
which he endeavors to portray '*the beginning, the
past, and the future {sic) of our planet,"' one is
reminded of the common symptom which manifests
itself in thinking all the rest of the world crazy.

The ** Heroic Age of Geology" succeeded this
period, and was characterized largely by a deter-
mination to discard speculation, and to seek to build
up a true science of actual fact and truth.

We have already seen, from Spencer's remarks,
that A. G. Werner (1749-1817), who was, however,
one of the leaders in Germany at this time, was

» Zittel, p. 42.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC .

History of the Idea 43

very far from following true inductive methods. And
the following language of Sir Archibald Geikie shows
that in him the family characteristics were decidedly
prominent :

But never in the history of science did a stranger hallu-
cination arise than that of Werner and his school, when they
supposed themselves to discard theory and build on a foun-
dation of accurately ascertained fact. Never was a system
devised in which theory was more rampant; theory, too,
unsupported by observation, and, as we now know, utterly
erroneous. From beginning to end of Werner's method and
its applications, assumptions were made for which there was
no ground, and these assumptions were treated as demon-
strable facts. The very point to he proved was taken for
granted, and the geognosts, who boasted of their avoidance
of speculation, were in reality among the most hopelessly
speculative of all the generations that had tried to solve
the problem of the theory of the earth. — ^'Founders of
Geology/' p. 112; Johns Hopkins Press, 1901.

In fact this author says that ''the Wernerians
were as certain of the origin and sequence of the
rocks as if they had been present at the formation
of the earth's crust." (Pp. 288, 289.) .

Here we see the family characteristics very
strongly developed.

In speaking of Werner's five successive ''suites"
or onion-coats in which he wrapped his embryo world,
Zittel complains:

Unfortunately, Werner's field observations were limited
to a small district, the Erz Mountains and the neighboring
parts of Saxony and Bohemia. And his chronological
scheme of formations was founded upon the mode of oc-
currence of the rocks within these narrow confines. —
P. 59,

Digitized by VjOOQIC

44 The Fundamentals of Geology

And yet, as we have seen, it is precisely such a
charge as this that Spencer and Huxley bring against
the modern phase of the doctrine of successive ages
based on the succession-of-life idea. Werner, from
observations * limited to a small district," con-
structed his scheme of exact chronological sequence
for the rest of the world, basing it entirely upon
the mineral or mechanical character of his ** suites.-'
And hundreds of enthusiastic followers long de-
clared that the rocks everywhere conformed to this
classification, even so great an observer as Von Hum-
boldt thinking that the rocks which he examined in
Central and South America fully confirmed Wer-
ner's chronological arrangement.

But such notions to-day only cause a smile of
pity, for it is now well known that, take the world
over, the rocks do not occur as Werner imagined,
though, as Geikie says, he and his disciples were as
certain of the matter ''as if they had been present
at the formation of the earth's crust." Besides, as
already pointed out, we moderns ought now to have
pretty well assimilated the idea that while one kind
of mineral or rock was forming in one locality, a
totally different kind of deposit may have been in
process of formation in another spot some distance
off at the very same time, and we can not imagine
a time in the past when this principle would not hold
good. But in a precisely similar way the idea of a
time value was, as we shall see, transferred from the
mechanical and mineral character of the rocks to
their fossil contents; and from observations again

Digitized by VjOOQIC

History of the Idea 45

* limited to a small district," William Smith and
Cuvier conceived the idea that the fossils occurred
only in a certain order; that only certain fossils
lived at a certain time ; that, for example, while Trilo-
bites were living and dying in one locality, Nummn-
lites or Mammals positively were not living and
dying in another locality, though in any system of
clear thinking this latter notion is just as irrational
as that of Werner.

In short, this new system of identifying rocks
by their fossils still retained the whole essential ab-
surdity of the onion-coat theory, namely, the uni-
versality of one kind of deposit; it merely restated
this theory in terms of the fossils, instead of in terms
of mineralogy and mechanical texture. It involved
all the arbitrary assumptions, all the incredible fic-
tions about unnatural past conditions, which char-
acterized the theory of Werner which it professed to
displace; and though all modem scientists profess
to have outgrown these crudities, they have never
made a clean job of eliminating the characteristic
absurdity of the whole system, namely, the univer-
sality, in the long ago, of one limited assemblage of
life forms. Hence Spencer is compelled to say,
^* Though the onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit
is traceable, under a transcendental form, even in
the conclusions of its antagonists."

The two cases are exactly parallel; only it has
taken us nearly a hundred years, it seems, to find
out that the fossils do not follow the prearranged
order of Smith and Cuvier any better than the rocks

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

46 The Fundamentals of Geology

and minerals follow the scheme of Werner. If hun-
dreds of geologists still seem to think that the fossils
in general agree with the standard order, we must
remember how many sharp-eyed observers said the
same thing for decades about Werner's scheme. The
taint of heredity will always come out sooner or
later ; and both of these schemes exhibit very strongly
the family history of the whole tribe of Cosmogonies,
for the facts refuse to certify that they are of sound
mind.

It was William Smith (1769-1839), an ignorant
English land surveyor, who first conceived the idea
of fixing the relative ages of strata by their fossils.
Just how far he carried this idea it seems difficult
to determine exactly. Lyell* says nothing along
this line about him, save that he followed the lead-
ing divisions of the Secondary strata as outlined
by Werner, though he claims ** independently" of the
latter. Whewell* remarks rather pityingly on his
having had **no literary cultivation/' in his youth,
but has nothing about the degree in which he is
responsible for the modem scheme of life succes-
sion of which many modern geologists have made
him the ^'father." Geikie and Zittel are much more
explicit. The former' says that *^he had reached
early in life the conclusions on which his fame rests,
and he never advanced beyond them." **His plain,
solid, matter-of-fact intellect never branched into

' ' ' Principles, ' ' p. 50, 8th ed.

***Hi8toi7 of the Inductive Sciences/' Vol. 2, p. 521.

" ' ' Founders of Geology, ' ' pp. 237, 238.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

History of the Idea 47

theory or speculation, but occupied itself wholly in
the observation of facts." Zittel' says pretty much
the same thing, remarking that ^* Smith confined
himself to the empirical investigation of his coun-
try, and was never tempted into general specula-
tions about the history of the formation of the
earth'' — words which to my mind are the very high-
est praise, for they seem to indicate that he was
only in a very limited way responsible for the un-
scientific and illogical scheme of a **phylogenic
series" or complete ''life history of the earth,"
which now passes as the science of geology. Doubt-
less, like his little bright-eyed German contemporary,
A. G. Werner, he had not had his imagination suffi-
ciently cultivated in his youth to be able to appre-
ciate the beauty of first assuming your premises and
then proving them by means of your conclusion;
that is, first assuming that there has been a gradual
development on the earth from the lowest to the
highest, and then arranging the fossils from scat-
tered . localities over the earth in such a way that
they can not fail to testify to the fact.

The following may be taken as a fair statement
of what he actually accomplished and taught:

After his long period of field observations, William
Smith came to the conclusion that one and the same suc-
cession of strata stretched through England from the south
coast to the east, and that each individual horizon could be
recognized by its particular fossils, that certain forms reap-
pear in the same beds in the different localities, and that

'History,'' p. 112.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

48 The Fimdamentals of Geology

each fossil species belongs to a definite horizon of rock.'
— Zittel, ''History/' p. 112.

But even granting the perfect accuracy of this
generalization of Smith's for the rocks which he
examined, I fail to see how it is any better than
Werner's scheme, which Zittel characterizes as
*^weak" and premature, and of which Whewell
(p. 521) says that '^he promulgated, as respecting
the world, a scheme collected from a province, and
even too hastily gathered from that narrow field."

Quoting again from Zittel 's criticism of Werner's
work (*' History of Geology," p. 59), we must admit
that Smith's observations also were * limited to a
small district," and **his chronological scheme of
formations was founded upon the mode of occur-
rence of the rocks [fossils] within these narrow con-
fines." There is, as we have shown, a monstrous
jump from this to the conclusion that even these
particular fossils must always occur in this par-
ticular relative order over the whole earth. How
can any one deny that if we had a complete collec-
tion of all the fossils laid down during the last
thousand years — when all admit that the so-called
'^phylogenic series" is complete — particular fossils
would in many cases he found to occur only in par-
ticular rocks^ and often be associated with only

' It should be noted that all these rocks in England thus examined
by Smith make up only a small fraction of the total geological series —
largely what we now call the Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks.

* ' ' The plants and animals of different geological periods do not
differ more from one another than those in opposite climates, or even
distant localities, at present." — ThillipSf "Manual of Geology,** p. 6^8,
1855.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

History of the Idea 49

certain kinds of minerals, such as clay, limestone,
or sand, and we could still arrange them in this
same artificial order from the lowest to the high-
est forms of life, while we might even find *^ small
districts" where the *'mode of occurrence of the
rocks within these narrow confines'' would happen
to have all the appearance of showing a true '*phy-
logenic'' or taxonomic order? At any rate, every
one knows that when we find, let us say, one plant be-
longing to the Heath family, we are very likely to
find a dozen or two dozen species of this same family
in the immediate vicinity; and the same is true of
thousands of other groups. All of which only means
that even in our modern world groups of related
species are often segregated off together, and occur
in particular localities only; while the same or simi-
larly associated groups of species may recur here
and there in localities widely separated from each
other. These things ought to be sufficient to show
us the weakness of this subjective method of study,
and the purely hypothetical and artificial value of
the fossils in determining the real age of a rock
deposit; because the geological classifications really
represent taxonomic values, the ^^phylogenic series"
is nothing more than an old-time taxonomic series,
and there is absolutely nothing at all to prove that
it represents succession in time.

The name of Baron Cuvier (1769-1832) is the
next that we have to consider. An examination of
part of his teaching will come naturally a little later
when considering '* extinct species." That part of

4 — Geology

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

50 The Fundamentals of Geology

his work which related to the doctrine of catastro-
phism is somewhat aside from the subject of our
study; while with regard to his influence on the
succession-of-life idea per se there is not very much
that need be said. And yet Cuvier is the real founder
of modern cosmological geology, and thus in a cer-
tain sense the father of biological evolution.

But if the absence of the architectonic mania for
building a cosmogony will serve to remove iu a great
measure any suspicions with regard to William
Smith's results, we can not say the same for those
of Cuvier. In his scheme the hereditary cosmolog-
ical taint, which is such an invariable characteristic
of the family, is very strong, though disguised and
almost transfigured by learning and genius. Doubt-
less these latter qualities have secured for the theory
its phenomenal length of life, though of course we
know that nothing born of this whole brood of sub-
jective speculations can ever secure a permanent
home in the kingdom of science.

**How glorious," wrote this otherwise truly great
man, in his famous * ^ Preliminary Discourse," *4t
would be if we could arrange the organized products
of the universe in their chronological order, as we
can already [Werner's onion-coats] do with the more
important mineral substances!"

His work (with that of his colaborer Brongniart)
on the fossils of the Paris basin was probably ac-
curate and logical enough for that limited locality.
It was only when he quietly assumed, as Werner had
done, that the rocks must always occur in this par-

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

History of the Idea 51

ticular order all over the world, or as Whewell ex-
presses it, ** promulgated as respecting the world, a
scheme collected from a province, and [perhaps]
even too hastily gathered from that narrow field" —
it was only, I say, when this monstrous assumption
was incorporated into his scheme, and he began to
call into being his ''glorious" vision of organic cre-
ation on the instalment plan, as Werner had done
with the minerals, that his great and valuable work
for science became tainted with the deadly cosmolog-
ical virus, dooming it to death sooner or later. Sher-
lock Holmes might attempt to diagnose a disease by
a mere glance at his patient *s boots, but even this
gave him more pertinent data and was a more log-
ical proceeding than the facts and methods of
Cuvier supplied for constructing a scheme of or-
ganic creation.

It will not be necessary to detail 'the manner in
which the modem ''phylogenic series" was gradu-
ally pieced together from the scattered fragments
here and there all over the globe; but it should be
noted here that the whole chain of life was practi-
cally complete before any serious attempt was made
to study the rocks on the top of the ground, and to
find out how this marvelous record of the past joined
on to the modern period, thus reversing completely
the true scientific method, and leavtag the most im-
portant of all, that is, the rocks containing human
remains and .^ other living species, over till the last,
with the result that we have for over half a century
been laboring under a ''glacial nightmare," and these

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

52 The Fundamentals of Geology

deposits on the top of the ground ** still remain in
many respects the despair of geology."

In the meantime many attempts had been made
to teach a theory of descent or evolution. Erasmus
Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, pub-
ished a book in 1796 advocating this idea; while
Lamarck in 1809, and others soon after, tried to
embellish this and make it plausible with all the
scientific knowledge then obtainable. Lamarck's
theory was based on spontaneous generation, and on
the alleged power to transmit to posterity the char-
acters acquired during the lifetime of the parent,
particularly the characters acquired as the effects
of use and disuse.

To all these evolutionary theories the command-
ing genius and scientific renown of Cuvier were in
direct opposition. By the year 1830 the conflict had
become acute; and by Cuvier 's victory that year over
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the theory of successive dis-
tinct creations remained the only thing recognized
as science. Indeed, from this date onward for several
decades, the theory of evolution ^^sank into oblivion,"
to use the words of August Weismann, '*and was
expunged from the pages of science so completely
that it seemed as if it were forever buried beyond
hope of resurrection." (Smithsonian Report, 1909,
p. 433.)

In further description of the evolutionary theories
as then presented we have the following:

All sorts of vague speculations were indulged in; and
these contributed less and less to the support of the

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

History of the Idea 53

theory, the more far-reaching they became. Many cham-
pions of the '*Naturphilosophie'' of the time, especially
Oken and Schelling, promulgated mere hypotheses as
truths; forsaking the realm of fact almost entirely, they
attempted to construct the whole world with a free hand,
so to speak, and lost themselves more and more in worth-
less phantasy. This naturally brought the theory of evo-
lution, and with it **Naturphilosophie," into disrepute, espe-
cially with the true naturalists, those who patiently observe
and collect new facts. The theory lost all credence, and
sank so low in the general estimation that it came to be
regarded as hardly fitting for a naturalist to occupy himself
with philosophical conceptions. — August Weismann, Smith-
sonian Report, 1909, p. 432.

But in the meantime a more detailed knowledge
of rocks, plants, and animals was gathered; and with
the doctrine of Creation represented only in bur-
lesque by the successive ages of Cuvier, it was in-
evitable that the seeming victory of the latter could
be only short-lived, so that the following years were
marked by the rise of the modern view of geology
and biological evolution, under Lyell (1797-1875),
Agassiz, and Darwin, a feature of the history that is
too familiar to need repetition here. But it must
be noted in passing that, as the results of the keen
discussions regarding the transmission of acquired
characters, which were started by Weismann in the
latter eighties of the last century, the modem world
has about settled two of the chief points involved;
namely :

1. That so far from natural selection being able
to originate a new species, it can not really origi-
nate anything at all, or as Hugo de Vries remarks,
**It may explain the survival of the fittest, but it

Digitized by VjOOQIC

54 The Fundamentals of Geology

can not explain the arrival of the fittest" (** Species
and Varieties/' pp. 825, 826); and —

2. That changes in the individual induced by
environment or by use and disuse of organs are not
transmitted to offspring, as has been abundantly
shown by Weismann, Wallace, Lankester, and others.

And hence it is hard to see what there is left of
what is generally known as Darwinism.

Of course there are abundant proofs that such
so-called ** species" as the Yak and Zebu of India,
the Bison of America, and the common domestic
Cattle, have all come from a common stock, since it
is well known that they will breed freely together.
The same thing may be said of the twenty-odd species
of Pigs scattered over the Old World (** Mammals
Living and Extinct," pp. 284, 285), or of the nu-
merous species of Dogs, Wolves, Foxes, Hyaenas, etc.
Hence there is a sense in which these discussions
about the origin of species have resulted in an en-
largement of our permanent stock of knowledge re-
garding living forms.' On the other hand, it now

• To show that the author is not adopting any new or strange view
of the question of what constitutes a species, some quotations may not
be amiss. The Standard Dictionary says that the term is used for **a
classificatory group of animals or plants subordinate to a genus, and
having members that differ among themselves only in minor details of
proportion and color, and are capable of fertile interbreeding indefi-
nitely. ' ' Le Conte also says : * * There are two bases on which species may
be founded. Species may be based on form, morphological species; or
they may be based on reproductive functions, physiological species. By
the one method a certain amount of difference of form, structure, and
habit constitute species; according to the other, if the two kinds breed
freely with each other, and the offspring is indefinitely fertile, the kinds
are called varieties; but if they do not, they are called species.'* And
he adds that this latter test **is regarded as a most important test of
true species, as contrasted with varieties or races.'' (^* Evolution and
Religious Thought," p. 233.)

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

History of the Idea 55

seems extremely doubtful if either of the above sup-
posed factors, natural selection or the transmission
of acquired characters, has been chiefly concerned
in bringing about the diversity that now exists
among our animals and plants, even where this di-
versity can reasonably be supposed to have originated
since the original Creation. In short, the whole bio-
logical field seems about worked out all around, so
far as this problem is concerned ; and the net results
appear to be that, while there is variation in plenty
among the plants and animals about us, far more
and greater variation than was formerly supposed,
yet life seems to be walled in by certain impassable
limits beyond which it has never yet been found pos-
sible to carry the results of any artificial or natural
change; while the theory of spontaneous generation
is dead for all coming time.

We have not the space to show in detail how
Agassiz (1807-1873) further complicated the problem
immensely by an absurdly illogical use of his three
** laws'' of comparison between the embryonic de-
velopment of the modern individual and the phylo-
genic series manufactured to fit it, when the prime
fact of there ever having been a succession of life
on the globe in any order whatever had never been
proved objectively; but I am free to say that if
Cuvier's system of creation on the instalment plan
had been fact instead of fancy, some method of
evolution would undoubtedly be implied in this gen-
eral fact. It is this instinctive feeling on the part
of modern scientists which makes them to-day, while

Digitized by VjOOQIC

56 The Fundamentals of Geology

confessing the failure of Darwinism, still cling to the
general idea of evolution somehow. Hence it seems
quite evident that, having deviated from strict in-
ductive methods by pursuing this ignis fatuus of a
cosmological history of Creation, it was essential in
the interests of true science to go the whole journey,
even though it was leading up a blind alley, and
make a complete investigation of both the biolog-
ical and the geological side of the question, in order
to complete the demonstration that science was on
a wrong track entirely, and that Creation was not
brought about in any such way. Darwin and Weis-
mann were inevitable in view of the wholly unscien-
tific course on which biology entered under the guid-
ance of Buff on and Cuvier; and Howbrth and Suess
were as inevitable in demonstrating the folly of
trying to explain the past geological changes by the
uniformitarianism of Button and Lyell. Uniformity
and evolution have had a fair chance, an open field,
and have done their best. But they have failed, mis-
erably failed.

What, then, can we take as the general lesson to
be learned from the stubborn way in which, for over
a hundred years, the world has followed this hyp-
notic suggestion of folly that we might explain the
origin of our world from the scientific standpoint as
only just like things that are now going on? One
of the lessons — there may be others — is that science
knows nothing about the details or order of Crea-
tion, for these are wholly beyond its sphere ; and that,
in speculating along these lines, the cosmological taint

Digitized by VjOOQIC

History of the Idea 57

will always vitiate the accuracy of our conclusions
and debauch the true spirit of induction. A hun-
dred years ago, some leaders of natural science
thought they knew all about how the world was made.
Wholly immune from doubt, they thought they had
discovered what they had only invented — a mere
shadow of their minds' own throwing. The keen
investigations inspired by Darwinism and Lyellism
were necessary to convince us that in a scientific
way we know nothing at all about it. Modern sci-
ence has simply developed a gigantic negative dem-
onstration that it did not occur by a gradual and
long-drawn-out progression from the low to the high,
and by processes similar to what is now going on;
and the evolution doctrine is only a by-product in
this demonstration. A hundred years — nay, fifty
years — ago this assumption did not appear so un-
scientific, for we did not then have the biological and
the geological evidence to refute such an idea. Now,
however, in the light of the modem progress of
science, this awful mystery of our existence, of our
creation and destiny, is borne in upon us from every
dividing cell, from every sprouting seed, from count-
less millions of the eloquent voices of nature, which
our forefathers were too blind to see, too deaf to
understand; and with weary, reluctant sadness does
human science confess that about it all she knows
absolutely nothing.

It is important to make this point clear, for it is
the very quintessence of modern science, the net
results of all our investigations. What we have

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

58 The Fundamentals of Geology

observed, what we know, is science (Latin, scio, I
know). But when all our investigations only impress
us the more deeply with the conviction that we do
not know anything and can never hope to know any-
thing in a scientific way of how the world was made,
or how life, or the species of animals and plants,
came into existence, the conclusion is inevitable that
Creation was something different, essentially and
radically different, from what is now going on. The
central idea of the evolution doctrine is uniformity,
that is, that what is now going on is identical with
or similar to what has always been going on; that
the present operations of nature are as much a part
of creation as anything that ever took place in the
past. But the net results of modern science are
against all this. They assure us, with words that
are all the more convincing because they have been
forced from unwilling lips, that there must have been
a real, immediate Creation at the beginning, essen-
tially different from anything now taking place. The
opening words of the Christian's Bible are at last
being vindicated by modern science: **In the be-
ginning God created the heaven and the earth."

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

CHAPTER III

Fact Number One

Hitherto we have been dealing only with the
a priori aspects of the succession-o£-life idea. We
have seen that it is really based on two primary as-
sumptions; namely:

1. That in the long ago there were no zoolog-
ical provinces and districts, and totally different
types could not have been living contemporaneously
in widely separated localities, — which is only the
modern form of the onion-coat theory stated nega-
tively; and also —

2. That over all the earth the fossils must al-
ways be found occurring in the particular order in
which they were first found in a few corners of
Western Europe.

We have dealt with only the first of these as-
sumptions in the first chapter of this book. The
whole idea is confessedly intricate, and very few
even among geologists have done enough persistent,
calm thinking on the subject to get any clear ideas
regarding it. Most of them profess to discard the
old onion-coat theory, and claim to believe in zoolog-
ical provinces and districts in th^ olden time. But
it is obvious that if the latter notion is honestly and
persistently adopted, we can not put any limits to

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

GEOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATIONS
As Usually Arranged

GROUP OB
SYSTEM

DIVISION

CLASS

DOMINANT TYPE

Oenozoic

Quaternary or
Post-Tertiary
or Pleistocene

Recent or Terrace

Champlain

Glacial

Man

Tertiary

Pliocene
Miocene
Eocene

Mesozoic

Cretaceous

Upper Cretaceous
Lower Cretaceous

Reptiles
Conifers
and Palms

Jurassic

Oolitic
Liassic

Triassic

Lower

Palseozoic

Oarboniferous

Permian

Coal-measures

Subcarboniferous

Amphibians

and
Coal Plants

Devonian

Upper Devonian
Middle Devonian
or Hamilton
Comiferous
Oriskany

Fishes and
Insects

Upper Silurian

Lower Helderberg

Onondaga

Niagara

Invertebrates

Lower Silurian

Trenton
Canadian

Cambrian

MK^^e
Lower

Pre-Cambrian, or
Algonkian

Primitive

Arcluean

(No Fossils)

Digitized by

Google

Fact Nufhber One 61

the diversity of plants and animals that may have
coexisted in widely separated localities ; that is,
Mammals may have been living on the land while
Trilobites were living in the sea; or the Nummulites
may have been contemporary with the Graptolites;
or Oaks, Elms, and Beeches, contemporary with the
Lepidodendrons and Sigillaria. But since the cur-
rent theories indignantly deny these latter possi-
bilities, it is only in effect to deny the existence, in
the ancient time, of zoological provinces and dis-
tricts, and to adopt the biological form of the onion-
coat theory. These are the two horns of the dilemma.
, But it is self-evident that the second of the above
assumptions must also be involved in the life succes-
sion idea. It is on the blending of these two assump-
tions, the former essentially absurd, and the latter
long ago disproved by the facts of the rocks, that
there has been built up the complete ^'phylogenic
series" from the Cambrian to the Pleistocene. For
it is obvious that not merely one, but both of these
points must be true in order to establish the geo-
logical life succession. But since both are false, the
whole theory of successive ages is left without any
defense in logical or scientific reasoning.

The way in which, as we have seen, Spencer,
Huxley, and others treated this subject, reminds us
very much of the old advice, ''When you meet with
an insuperable difficulty, look it steadfastly in the
face — and pass on.'' For neither they nor any of
their thousands of followers have ever, so far as I
know, pointed out the horrible logic in taking this

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

62 The Fundamentals of Geology

immense complex of guesses and assumptions as the
starting-point for new departures, the solid foun-
dation for detailed '* investigations" as to just how
this wonderful phenomenon of development has oc-
curred. For after Agassiz and his contemporaries
had built on these large assumptions of Cuvier, and
had arranged the details and the exact order of these
successive forms by comparison with the embryonic
life of the modern individual, the evolutionists of our
time, led by such men as Spencer and Haeckel, with
their '* biogenetic principle,'' prove {"i) their theory
of evolution by the assertion that the embryonic life
of the individual is only '*a brief recapitulation, as
it were from memory," of this (artificial) geological
succession. There would really seem to be little
hope of reaching with any arguments a generation
of scientists who can elaborate genealogical trees of
descent for the different families and genera of the
animal kingdom, based wholly on such a series of
assumptions and blind guesses, and then palm off
their work on a credulous world as the proved re-
sults of inductive science.

And yet I am tempted to make some effort in
this direction. I suppose I must not blame my
scientific colleagues, any more than I blame myself.
Fifty years ago, nay, twenty-five years ago, we did
not have the facts which are now at hand. But since
we have quite fully examined the various aspects of
the a priori argument under the head of the onion-
coat theory, it simply remains to test the second of
the above-mentioned assumptions by the facts of the

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fact Number One 63

rocks ; because the first of these assumptions, or even
any phase of the onion-coat theory, is quite evi-
dently beyond the pale of sober scientific discussion.
For if any one has so far forsaken the paths of
inductive science as to dogmatize about a time in
the past when there were no zoological provinces
and districts, but only one and the same assemblage
of life forms everywhere on earth, there is no use
attempting to reason with him until he gets back on
solid ground once more. Hence it remains now simply
to test by the facts of the rocks the second assump-
tion; namely, that all over the earth the fossils in-
variably occur in the particular order in which they
were first found in a few corners of Western Europe
by the founders of the science. Have we already a
sufficiently broad knowledge of the rocks of the
world to decide such a question? I think we have.
To begin, then, at the beginning, let us try to
find out how we can fix on the rocks which are un-
deniably the oldest on the globe. We should expect
to find a good many patches of them here and there,
but there must be some common characteristic by
which they may be distinguished wherever found.
Of course, when I say '* rocks" here I mean fossils;
for as has long been agreed upon by geologists,
mineral and mechanical characters are of practically
no use in determining the age of deposits, and we
are here dealing only with life and the order in
which it has occurred on the globe. Accordingly our
problem is really to find that typical group of fossils

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

64 The Fundamentals of Geology

which is essentially older than all dissimilar groups
of fossils.

In most localities we do not have to go very far
down* into the earth to find granite or other so-
called igneous rocks, which not only do not contain
any traces of fossils, but which we have no proper rea-
son for supposing ever contained any. These Azoic or
Archaean rocks constitute practically all the earth's
crust, there being only a thin skim of fossiliferous
strata on the outside, like the skin on an apple. Now
it would be natural enough to suppose that those
fossils which occur at the bottom, or next to the
Archcean, are the oldest. This is doubtless what the
earlier geologists had in mind, or at least ought to
have had, though it is not quite certain that they
had any clear thoughts on the matter whatever.
They did not really begin at the bottom, but half
way up, so to speak, at the Mesozoic and Tertiary
rocks; and Sedgwick and Murchison, who undertook
to find bottom, became too excited over their Cambro-
Silurian controversy to attend to so insignificant a
detail as the logical proof that any type of fossil
was really older than all others. If they had really
stopped to consider that some type of fossil might
occur next to the Archaean in Wales, and another
type occur thus in Scotland, while still another type
altogether might be found in this position in some
other locality, and so on over the world, leading us

^When the text-books speak of ten or twelve miles thickness of the
fossiliferous rocks, the reader should remember how the rocks have to be
patched up together from here and there to make this incredible thick-
ness, as only a small fraction of such a thickness exists in any one place.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fact Number One 65

to the very natural conclusion that in the olden
times as now there were zoological provinces and
districts, the history of science during the nineteenth
century might have been very different, and this
chapter might never have been written. But this
commonplace of modern geology, that any type of
fossil whatever, even the very *' youngest," may
occur next to the Archaean, was not then considered
or understood; and when about 1830 it came to be
recognized, other things were allowed to obscure its
significance, and the habit of arranging the rocks
in chronological order according to their fossils was
too firmly established to be disturbed by such an idea.
It was long thought that the *'01enellus" beds
were the oldest fossiliferous deposits. They were
first described from Scandinavia, but have since
been found in Newfoundland, the Rocky Mountains,
and elsewhere. Of late years, however, other rocks
have been distinguished in these same regions as
still older, and have been called Pre-Cambrian, Al-
gonkian, and various other names that all refer to
the same deposits. They consist of conglomerates,
sandstones, graywackes, quartzites, slates, and lime-
stones, and contain traces of Protozoa, Coelenterates,
Echinoderms, Brachiopods, MoUusks, Worms, and
Arthropods, though these fossils are extremely scarce
and not very well preserved. The reasons for call-
ing these rocks older than any Cambrian beds are too
technical to be given here in detail, but the argument
consists essentially of two points: (1) They are
sometimes found stratigrapliically below beds classed

5 — Geology

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

66 The Fundamentals of Geology

as Lower Cambrian, and (2) They contain, in the
aggregate, fossils of a more *^ generalized" structure
than those of the Cambrian. Accordingly these Al-
gonkian or Pre-Cambrian beds are regarded as the
oldest fossiliferous deposits on the globe.

Now, granting these two facts as stated, where
are we in point of strict logic and demonstrable
science! Quite obviously we are just where we
started in the first chapter of this book. For shall
we say (1) that when these Pre-Cambrian forms were
living in these localities, there could have been no
other distinctly different forms of life living else-
where? Or shall we boldly and baldly assume (2) that
at one time these beds were actually universal around
the globe, like Werner's onion-coats? There is no
third choice. But to hold openly to either of these
alternatives is surely not a very comfortable position
for any one to be placed in who wishes to pass as a
scientist. In no other department of modern thought
could such postulates be seriously considered for a
minute, and the time must soon come when they
will be considered as anachronisms even in geology.
On the other hand, how are we to know in a sci-
entific way that the lowest or more ** generalized''
forms must actually have lived before others? Is
such a postulate sufficiently axiomatic to serve as a
foundation-stone for not only geology but all bio-
logical science? Surely there is no need of point-
ing out that such a premise begs the whole question
of evolution. What is the use of any further dis-
cussion, if we already know that the lowest or more

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Fact Number One 67

generalized types of life lived first and the other
higher or more specialized forms came afterward!

Thus we are restricted to the one sensible and
really scientific fact regarding these beds; namely,
their stratigraphical position. For any given limited
locality, where stratigraphy can be followed out,
the lowest beds are of course the oldest. But we
can make no progress by such a method when we
come to deal with the world at large, for actual
stratigraphical relationships can be proved over only
very limited areas. These beds may be the lowest
in this locality, may rest on the granite, and have
every appearance of antiquity. But other beds,
containing very different fossils, are in precisely
this position elsewhere, and where stratigraphical
position can no more prove relative age than the
overlap of scales on a fish proves those at the tail
to be older than those at the head.

For the Fact Number One, which I have chosen
as the subject of this chapter, is the now well-estab-
lished principle that any kind of fossiliferous rock
whatever, even ^'young'^ Tertiary rocks, may rest
upon the Archaean or Azoic series, or may them-
selves he almost wholly metamorphosed or crystalline,
thus resembling in position and outward appearance
the so-called ''oldest'' rocks.

The first part of this proposition, about any rocks
occurring next to the Archaean, is covered by the fol-
lowing quotation from Dana:

A stratum of one era may rest upon any stratum in the
whole of the series below it, — the Coal-measures on either the

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

68 The Fundamentals of Geology

Archaean, Silurian, or Devonian strata ; and the Jurassic, Cre-
taceous, or Tertiary on any one of the earlier rocks, the inter-
mediate being wanting. The Quaternary in America in some
cases rests on Archaean rocks, in others on Silurian or Dev-
onian, in others on Cretaceous or Tertiary. — ^'Manual," p.
399, 4th ed.

It would be tedious to multiply testimony on a
point so generally understood.

As for the other half of this fact, that even the
so-called '* youngest" rocks may be metamorphic and
crystalline just as well as the *' oldest,'' it also is
now a recognized commonplace of science. Dana"
says that as early as 1833 Lyell taught this as a
general truth applicable to ''all the formations, from
the earliest to the latest."

But the converse of this Fact Number One is
equally true; that is, the very oldest rocks may not
only be on the surface, but may be still unconsoli-
dated, the Cambrian rocks occurring thus around the
Baltic and in various parts of the United States,
where ''the rocks still retain their original horizon-
tality of deposition, the muds are scarcely indurated,
and the sands are still incoherent."* ("Encyclopaedia
Britannica," Vol. 5, p. 86, Cambridge University ed.)

The first reference I can find to any disproof of
this old fable of Werner's, that only certain kinds
of rock are to be found next to the "Primitive" or
ArchaBan, is in the observations of Studer and Beau-
mont in the Alps (1826-1828), who found "relatively
young" fossils in crystalline schists, which, as Zittel
says, "was a very great blow to the geologists who

'Manual,'* p. 408.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fact Number One 69

upheld the hypothesis of the Archaean or Pre-Cam-
brian age of all gneisses and schists."

James Geikie, doubtless referring to the same
series of rocks, tells us that ^'in the Central Alps of
Switzerland, some of the Eocene strata are so highly-
metamorphosed that they closely resemble some of
the most ancient deposits of the globe, consisting,
as they do, of crystalline rocks, marble, quartz rock,
mica schist, and gneiss." (^'Manual of Historical
Geology," p. 74.)

Hence we need not be surprised at the following
statement of the " situation by Zittel :

The last fifteen years of the nineteenth century witnessed
very great advances in our knowledge of rock deformation
and metamorphism. It hds been found that there is no
geological epoch whose sedimentary deposits have been wholly
safeguarded from metamorphic changes; and as this broad
fact has come to be realized, it has proved most unsettling,
and has necessitated a revision of the stratigraphy of many
districts in the light of the new possibilities. The newer re-
searches scarcely recognize any theory; they are directed
rather to the empirical method of obtaining all possible infor-
mation regarding microscopic and field evidences of the pas-
sage from metamorphic to igneous rocks, and from metamor-
phic to sedimentary rocks. — ^^ History," p. 360.

But in addition to what Zittel means by recog-
nizing ''no theory" as to the origin of the various
sorts of igneous rocks, it seems to me that this
''broad fact" ought surely to prove "most unset-
tling" to the traditional theories about certain fos-
sils being intrinsically older than others. With our
minds divested of all prejudice, and this "broad"
Fact Number One well comprehended, that any kind

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

70 The Fundamentals of Geology

of fossil whatever may occur next to the Archaean,
and the rocky strata containing it may in texture and
appearance ''closely resemble some of the most an-
cient deposits on the globe,'' where on this broad
earth shall we look for the place to start our life
succession? That is, where can we now go to find
those kinds of fossils which we can prove, by inde-
pendent arguments, to be undeniably older than all
others? Or how are we to be sure that when the
so-called ''oldest" types, let us say the Algonkian
or Pre-Cambrian, were in existence, this assemblage
of life alone encircled the globe, iand no other very
diverse type was in existence anywhere on earth? It
may seem very difficult for some of us to discard a
theory so long an integral part of all geology; but
until it can be proved that this "broad fact" as
stated by Zittel and Dana is no fact at all, I see
no escape from the acknowledgment that the doctrine
of any particular fossils being essentially older than
others is a pure invention, with absolutely nothing
in nature to support it.

Or, to state the matter in another way. Since the
life succession theory rests logically and historically
on the biological form of Werner's onion-coat notion
that only certain kinds of rocks (fossils) are to be
found at the "bottom," or next to the Archaean, and
it is now acknowledged everywhere that any kind of
rocks whatever may be thus situated, it is as clear
as sunlight that the life succession theory rests log-
ically and historically on a myth, and that there is
no way of proving what kind of fossil was buried first.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fact Number One 71

^ Of course, the reason the followers of Cuvier and
his life succession now find themselves in such a
predicament as this, is because they have not iDeen
following true inductive methods. Theirs has been
a geology by hypothesis instead of by observed fact.
They started out with a pretty scheme ready made
about the origin and formation of the world, per-
fectly innocent of any evil intent in such a method
of procedure, and unconscious of its speculative or
subjective character; and for nearly a hundred years
they have supposed that they were following in-
ductive methods in geology. But in view of what we
have now learned, I think we are perfectly justified
in adapting and applying to Cuvier and the modem
school of geologists what Geikie says about Werner
and his school:

But never in the history of science did a stranger hallu-
cination arise than that of Cuvier and the modern school,
when they supposed themselves to discard theory and build on
a foundation of accurately ascertained fact. Never was a
system devised in which theory was more rampant ; theory, too,
unsupported by observation, and, as we now know, utterly
erroneous. From beginning to end of Cuvier 's method and
its applications, assumptions were made for which there was
no ground, and these assumptions were treated as demon-
strable facts. The very point to be proved was taken for
granted, and the evolutionary geologists who boasted of their
avoidance of speculation, were in reality among the most
hopelessly speculative of all the generations that had tried
to solve the problem of the theory of the earth. — ^'Founders
of Geology/' p. 112.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

CHAPTER IV

Fact Number Two

If we had ample evidence that a certain man
was personally acquainted with Julius Caesar, that
they were born in the same town, went to school
together, served in the same wars, and later carried
on an extensive mutual correspondence, would we
not conclude that they must have lived in the same
age of the world's history? I confess that the con-
clusion seems quite unavoidable. Who would dream
that nineteen centuries or so had separated the two
lives, and that while one was an old Roman the
other was an American of the twentieth century!

Some such a puzzle as this is presented in geology
under the general subject of conformability. Let
me define this term.

Strata laid down by water are in the first place
in a horizontal position. Some subsequent force may
have disturbed them, so that we may now find
them standing up on edge like books in a library.
But all human experience goes to show that they
were not deposited in this position. Some disturbing
cause must have taken hold of them since they were
laid down, for the water in which they were made
must have spread them out smooth and horizontal,
each subsequent layer or stratum fitting '4ike a

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fact Number Two 73

glove" on the preceding. Thus when we find two suc-
cessive layers agreeing with one another in their
planes of bedding, with every indication that the
lower one was not disturbed in any way before the
upper one was spread out upon it, the two are
^ said to be conformable. But if the lower bed has
evidently been upturned or disturbed before the
other was laid down, or if its surface has even
been partly eroded or washed away by the water,
the strata are said to be xiiiconformable, or they
A show unconformability in bedding.

Of course, in all this we are dealing only with
relative time. When we find one bed or stratum
lying above another in their natural position, the
lower one is of course the older of the two; but
whether laid down ten minutes earlier, or ten mil-
lion years earlier, how are we to determine? Ignor-
ing the matter of the fossils they contain, must we
not own that, though there is no way of telling just
how long the lower one was deposited before the
next succeeding, yet if the two are conformable to
one another, and the bottom one sliows no evidence
\ of disturbance or erosion before the other was fitted
upon it, the strong presumption would seem to be
that no great length of time could have elapsed be-
tween the laying down of the two layers! To say
that we have here a geological example similar to
that of a modern American having been personally
acquainted with Julius Caesar, would seem to be
quite *' inexplicable,'' to use Herbert Spencer's fa-
vorite word.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

■\

74 The Fundamenlals of Geology

But if the life succession theory be true, we have
just such a conundrum in our Fact Number Two,
which is that any formation whatever may rest con-
formably upon any other ^^ older '^ fossiliferous for-
mation!^

The lower may be Devonian, Silurian, or Cam-
brian, and the upper one Cretaceous or Tertiary,
and thus, according to the theory, millions on mil-
lions of years must have elapsed after the first, and
before the following bed was laid down, but the
conformability is perfect, and the beds have all the
appearance of having followed in quick succession.
Sometimes, too, these age-separated formations are
lithologically the same, and can only be separated by
their fossils! A still more amazing fact, from the
standpoint of current theory, is that these con-
formable conditions are often repeated over and over
again in the same vertical section, the same kind of
bed reappearing alternately with other beds of an
entirely different character ; that is, a certain kind
of fossiliferous stratum may be found interbedded
several times in a manifestly undisturbed series of
very different beds. Of course these things are a
great puzzle to the believers in the successive ages,
while they are perfectly intelligible to the advocates
of inductive geology.

But before going into the minute description of

^ Over three quarters of a century ago this principle was recog-
nized. ''I feel persuaded that there is no fact more clear in geology
than this; namely, that the upper surface of almost every formation
was yet soft and moist when the superincumbent sediments were de-
posited upon if (Fairholme, ''The Mosaic Deluge," p. 396, 1837.)

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Fact Number Two 75

any of these cases, we must notice some general
statements. Thus as long ago as the date of the
publication of /^The Origin of Species/' Darwin, in
speaking of the ^imperfection of the geological
record," could speak of '^the many cases on record
of a formation conformably covered, after an im-
mense interval of time, by another and later forma-
tion, without the underlying bed having suffered in
the interval by any wear and tear/' (^* Origin,"
Vol. 2, p. 58, 6th ed. The first edition, I believe,
contains the same language.)

Also Geikie, in speaking of how ''fossil evidence
may be made to prove the existence of gaps which
are not otherwise apparent," says that '4t is not
so easy to give a satisfactory account of those which
occur where the strata are strictly conformable, and
where no evidence can be observed of any consid-
erable change of physical conditions at the time of
deposit. A group of quite conformable strata having
the same general lithological characters throughout,
may be marked by a great discrepance between the
fossils of the upper and the lower part." In many
cases, he says, these conditions are ''not merely local,
but persistent over wide areas. . . . They occur
abundantly among the European Palaeozoic and Sec-
ondary rocks," and are ''traceable over wide re-
gions." ("Text-Book," p. 842.)

We have seen how Dana admits that "a stratum
of one era may rest upon any stratum in the whole
series below it, . . . the intermediate being want-
ing." He classes this under the head of the ''diffi-

Digitized by VjOOQIC

76 The Fundamentals of Geology

cutties'' of the science, quite naturally, as it would
seem, though he does not expressly assert that these
age-separated formations are often conformable to
one another, as Geikie and Darwin have said in the
quotations given above.

Suess, however, is much more explicit, for he
declares that there are ** numerous examples" of
*^ concordant superposition of the more recent beds
on those of much greater age.'' We need not re-
produce the specific examples he mentions, and need
only quote his remark that comparatively ** young''
rocks often '^rest in perfect concordance on much
older beds, so that the stratigraphical relations offer
no hint of the great gap which occurs at the line
of contact." (Vol. 2, p. 543.) All of which, he says,
^'may well be cause for astonishment."

The literature really teems with illustrations of
these facts, and the more detailed accounts con-
tained in the various Greological Reports are often
quite charmingly naive in their description of the
conditions. Two examples, however, must suffice,
both from the Canadian Northwest.

The first is from the Report on the region about
Banff, in Alberta, near the line of the Canadian
Pacific Railway, and just east of the Rockies:

East of the main divide the Lower Carboniferous is over-
laid in places by beds of Lower Cretaceous age, and here
again, although the two formations differ so widely in respect
to age, one overlies the other without any perceptible break,
and the separation of one fjom the other is rendered more
difficult by the fact that the upper beds of the Carboniferous
are lithologically almost precisely like those of the Cretaceous

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fact Number Two 77

[above them]. Were it not for fossil evidence, one would
naturally suppose that a single formation was being dealt
with, — Canadian ''Annual Report/' New Series, Vol. 2, Pari
A, p. 8.

The other example is from the District of Atha-
basca :

The Devonian limestone is apparently succeeded conform-
ably by the Cretaceous, and with the possible exception of
a thin bed of conglomerate of limited extent, which occurs
below Crooked Rapid on the Athabasca, the age of which
is doubtful, the vast interval of time which separated the
two formations is, so far as observed, unrepresented either by
deposition or erosion. — ''Annual Report,'' New Series, Vol, 5,
Part D, p. 52,

Of course, some geological writers labor to ex-
plain this thundering rebuke of their theory, just
as the Ptolemaic astronomers had their ''deferents'^
and ''epicycles'' for every new difficulty. But surely
the detailed records of such observations as these
are fearful examples of the power of tradition to
blind the minds of investigators to the meaning of
the very plainest facts.

On a previous page {Id., p. 51), the author last
quoted gives us some idea of the "remarkable per-
sistence" of this instructive case of conformability,
which extends from the Athabasca "in a broad band
around the southern end of Birch Mountains, and
across Lake Claire to Peace River, and up the latter
stream to a point two miles above Vermillion Falls."

The distance, as I judge from the map, can not
be less than 150 miles in a straight direction, thus
making a district of probably several thousand square
miles in extent where, according to the theory of a

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

78 The Fundamentals of Geology

life succession, nature must have put an injunction
on the action of the elements, and they had to con-
tinue in the status quo for millions of ages, or from
the Devonian to the Cretaceous '^age,'' the water
neither wearing away nor building up over any part
of this consecrated ground during all this time.
No wonder Suess says that such things ^'may well
be cause for astonishment." (''The Face of the
Earth,'' Vol. 2, p. 543.)

Nor is this all, for in this same Eeport (Part E,
p. 209), we are told of strata near Lake Manitoba,
over 500 miles away, in almost the same wonderful
relationship, — ''Devonian rocks very similar in char-
acter" to those in Athabasca still overlaid directly
by the Cretaceous, though in this case as it happens
" unconf ormably. " It would almost seem to be a
bona fide case of Werner's onion-coats cropping out.

And all this incredible picture of nature's in-
consistent behavior in past ages is necessitated solely
by the loving allegifilnce with which the infallibility of
the life succession theory is regarded by modem
geologists.'

* In the earlier and more rational days of geology, many writers used
to remark how all the fossiliferous deposits were closely connected with
one another, while being everywhere unconformable to the Archaean or
the Primitive, and also unconformable to the Eecent. De la Beche and
Phillips may be especially mentioned in this connection. Another geo-
logical writer, Dr. George Young, author of ^*A Geological Survey of
the Yorkshire Coast,'* in a paper communicated to the Geological Sec-
tion of the British Association, 3838, remarks: "In fact, although in
describing them we may distinguish a succession of deposits, they are
so connected together as to form one whole, — one grand deposit; lead-
ing us to conceive that one age might give birth to the entire series.
... However numerous the beds, and however we may attempt to sub-
divide them, they are but parts of the same whole; and instead of being
very slowly formed during a long succession of ages, they hear the marks
of having been deposited about one period.'*

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

CHAPTER V

Turned Upside Down ; Fact Nunnber Three

It is a law of the human mind, that in all scien-
tific inquiry we generally find what we are looking
for; in other words, nature will oiily answer us when
we put to her leading questions, or when we shape
our questions so they can be answered by yes or no.
^'Nature," says Sir E. Ray Lankester, in his essay
on Degeneration, ^ Ogives no reply to a general in-
quiry — she must be interrogated by questions which
already contain the answer she is to give; iii other
words, the observer can only observe that which he
is led by hypothesis to look for."

For nearly a hundred years the rocks in all parts
of the world have been interrogated in the terms of
a single theory; and since this theory has been
treated constantly as an axiomatic fact which it
would be folly to question or disregard; an aflfirma-
tive answer has always been extracted from the rocks
sooner or later, though often the methods employed
to elicit such an answer remind us very much of
those employed in other days to get the desired an-
swer from obstinate heretics.

Every student of mountain structure becomes im-
pressed with the mighty forces that have acted upon
the strata in folding, twisting, and contorting them.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Digitized by

Google

Turned Upside Doivn; Fact Number Three 81
But often the interpretation of the rec-

JB|||^.2^ ord has been made unnecessarily com-

^1*^1"^ gS plicated and even incredible by trying

'^^ll!"ig<l to make the beds confirm this prear-

|||^t|^g ranged order in which it was supposed

.sls"t||s^ they must occur. Thus when we are told

^|a5«gis^ by a standard authority like Dana, that

^•§11^ g I . one of the great folds of the Alps ''has

sg|^5&| P^t ^^^ beds upside down over an area

§1^1 1^1 of 450 square miles'' (''Manual/' p.

|j^|S||| 367), we very naturally ask. What evi-

3'§®2l_fe§ dence is there of such an awful and

^tl*"iS&-3 incredible catastrophe? Most of the

3 * 2^ « p^^ folds in the mountains that we can really

o5^-5^"fei^ follow up and trace out in detail are to

^■a|^«||'^ be measured in feet and yards, not in

"'l'^5'«2'^g miles or geographical degrees. Ought

l*llssil ^® ^^* *^ expect and to demand the

-•?g»^'§|.s* most positive evidence if we are to be-

;§^"|^*al;^. lieve that old Mother Earth ever turned

f^^®^|j3| such a huge calcareous and silicious pan-

^I's^^sg^S cake as this describes? In other words,

S.il^S^g while every intelligent man knows that

•^1^1^^^ the rocks have in many instances been

§l.af2\l* tilted up at various angles or perhaps

«| 2**^1^1 even overturned, yet the thickness of

I'^lJ.siS^ the strata thus involved and the size of

^|rl|'^«| the folds thus made (see Fig. 3) are in

^"'l^sSilg all cases so inconsiderable that the un-

.a£-5o|||^§ sophisticated man is compelled to look

■|3j^||^«g^^. with suspicion on statements like this

I &s sills that speak of a whole country being

6 — Geology

Digitized by LjOOQIC

82 The fundamentals of Geology

found upside down; and his incredulity is not at alj
diminished on finding that in such instances the only
evidence we have of such an astonishing event is that
the strata are here in the wrong order, the ^^ older"
fossils being on top, and the ^'younger" ones under-
neath, over these immense tracts of country.

But let us retrace our steps somewhat, and pick
up the thread of our argument. We have already
found quite serious reason to question the accuracy
of this life succession theory; but there is still an-
other way of testing its rationality. If certain fossils
are not necessarily older than certain others, it might
reasonably be expected that we would now and then
find them reversed as to position; that is, with the
*' younger'^ below and the ^* older" above. Accord-
ingly we have the following very necessary caution
from Professor Nicholson:

It may even be said that in any case where there should
appear to be a dear and decisive discordance between the
physical and the palaeontological [fossil] evidence as to the
age of a given series of beds, it is the former that is to be
distrusted rather than the latter. — ^' Ancient Life History of
the Earth/' p. 40,

Humorous ? Not at all ; the theory requires it, and
therefore quite seriously we are told, in effect, (1)
that there has been a succession of life on the globe
because the fossils always occur in a certain relative
order of succession, and (2) that whenever they are
found in the reverse order, we must distrust the
positive evidence of all our senses, and say that
somehow the *^ older" beds have been put on top, and
those below are really *' younger," but in the wrong

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Turned Upside Down; Fact Number Three 83

position. And yet some people have even wished to
class this sort of geology among the exact sciences !
To meet all ordinary cases of this character,
where the differences involve only a few horizons
representing only a few *^ages" or a mere fraction
of the total of *' geological time/' the theory of
pioneer *' colonies" was invented by Barrande in
1852. Ten years later appeared Huxley's famous
essay on/^Homotaxis/' already quoted from in chap-
ter 1; but this, instead of pointing the way for a
complete reconstruction of geological theory as it
ought to have been allowed to do, seems only to have

V been used to help explain away the troublesome evi-
dence in such upside-down conditions as the Pikermi
beds in Greece, which contain typical Miocene types,
but rest on late Pliocene strata; or the Gondwanas
of India, which contain a Rhaetic flora, but overlie

'^ a Jurassic flora, with a Triassic fauna above both;
or the Newcastle beds in Australia, where a Jurassic
flora is inextricably mixed up with a Lower Car-
boniferous fauna, with Permian beds over all; to
say nothing of many cases nearer home, such as the
Dakota beds of America, where fossils that ought

. to be classed as Tertiary have undisputed Creta-
ceous beds above them. Such, however, are only the
ordinary diflSculties of the theory, encountered in
every considerable region penetrated by geological
exploration.

But for extreme cases, say where Cambrian or
other Palaeozoic fossils occur above Jurassic, Creta-
ceous, or Tertiary, there is in such a predicament

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

84 The Fundamentals of Geology

always an anxious search made for faults and dis-
placements; and if others are not to be found, the
stratification planes separating the beds are called
'^faults/' and then we are confidently told that im-
mense mountain masses, perhaps covering thousands
of square miles, have been pushed up on top of the
younger rocks, where they now lie in what looks
exactly like a normal position with nearly horizontal
stratification. Albert Heim of Switzerland was per-
haps the first to teach the scientific world to speak
of huge ^^overthrust folds," mapping them out with
imaginary arcs of circles miles high in the air as
the place where these folds once were, and such ex-
planations are not yet entirely discarded. But of
late years the theory of '* thrust faults," with the
mountains pushed bodily up on top of the other
strata, has become the more popular method of ex-
planation, and there is scarcely an artificial geolog-
ical section made within recent years that does not
contain one or more of these ** thrust faults." (See
Fig. 18.) But the really important thing to remember
in this connection is that it is solely because the
fossils are found occurring in the wrong order of
sequence that any such devices are thought to be
necessary, — devices which, as has already been sug-
gested of similar expedients to explain away evi-
dence, deserve to rank with the famous *^ epicycles"
of Ptolemy, and will do so some day.

Here is Greikie's amazing style of argument to
prove the reality of such great earth movements:

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Turned Upside Down; Fact Number Three 85

We may even demonstrate [?] that in some mountain-
ous ground the strata have been turned completely upside
down if we can show that the fossils in what are now the
uppermost layers ought properly to lie underneath those in
the beds below ih^m.—'' Text-Book,'' p. 837, ed, of 1903.

Some day, I fancy, such a statement will be
regarded as one of the curiosities of the history of
scientific theories. But this is no isolated expres-
sion wrested from its context; it is the fundamental
method employed in all modern geological investi-
gation, and well illustrates what Sir Henry Howorth
calls the '^singular and notable fact that, while
most other branches of science have emancipated
s^ themselves from the tranamels of metaphysical rea-
soning, the science of geology still remains imprisoned
in 'a priori' theories." (^^The Glacial Nightmare, '^
Preface 7.) *

Here is another statement of the same general
import, taken from this standard text-book, regard-
ing some conditions in the Alps:

The strata could scarcely be supposed to have been really
inverted, save for the evidence [ ?J as to their true order of
succession supplied by their included fossils. . . . Portions
of Carboniferous strata appear as if regularly interbedded
among Jurassic rocks, and indeed could not be separated save
after a study of their enclosed organic remains. — Id., p. 678.

Plenty of striking examples of such upside-down
conditions have come to light in recent years, but
we have here room for the details of only one or
two. But these are typical of the rest; and I be-
lieve they are quite sufficiently obvious in their mean-
ing to prove that the rocks were really laid down
in the order in which we now find them.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

86 The Fundamentals of Geology

The first instance is from a part of Alberta just
east of the Rocky Mountains, where the Canadian
Pacific Railway enters the foot-hills. (See frontis-
piece.) Here the whole of the Fairholme- Mountain,
east of Banff, and north of the railway and the
Bow River, consists of Cambrian limestones, and
V yet they rest apparently conformably on Cretaceous
' shales. R. G. McConnell, of the Canadian Survey,
who first described it, remarks with amazement on
the way in which the line of separation between the
shales and the limestone, what the current theory is
compelled to call the ''thrust plane,'' resembles in
all respects an ordinary stratification plane. For
he says:

The angle of incUnation of its plane to the horizon is
very low, and in consequence of this its outcrop follows a very
sinuous line along the base of the mountains, and acts exactly
like the line of contact of two nearly horizontal formations.

The best places for examining this fault are at the gaps of
the Bow and of the south fork of Ghost River. At the former
place the Cretaceous shales form the floor of the bay which the
Bow has cut in the eastern wall of the range, and rise to a
considerable height in the surrounding slopes. Their line
of contact with the massive gray limestones of the overlying
Castle Mountain group is well seen near the entrance to the
gap in the hills to the north. The fault plane here is nearly
horizontal, and the two formations, viewed from the valley,
appear to succeed one another conformably. — -^Annual Re-
port/' 1886, Part D, pp. 33, 34.

This author further declares that the underlying
Cretaceous shales are ^^very soft," and '^have suf-
fered little by the sliding of the limestone over
' them." (P. 84.)

But what an amazing condition of affairs is this!

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Turned Upside Down; Fact Number Three 87

Here are great mountainous masses of rock, very
similar in mechanical and mineral make-up to thou-
sands of examples elsewhere. The line of bedding
between them ^^acts exactly like the line of contact
of two nearly horizontal formations," and in a nat-
ural section cut out by a river the two ^'appear to
succeed one another conformably." And yet we are
asked to believe that all this is merely an optical
illusion. The rocks could not possibly have been
deposited in this way, for the lower ones contain

^ '^Benton fossils" (Cretaceous), and the upper ones
are Cambrian, and almost the whole geological series
and untold millions of years occurred after the upper
one and before the lower one was formed. Solely
on the strength of the infallibility of a theory in-
vented a hundred years ago in a little corner of
Western Europe, which ^^promulgated, as respecting
the world, a scheme collected from that province,''
and assumed that over all the world the rocks must
always follow the order there observed, we are here
asked to deny the positive evidence of our senses
BECAUSE these rocks do not follow this accepted
order, I must confess that I can not see the force
of such a method of reasoning. It is carrying the
argument several degrees beyond the reasoning of
the three little green peas in the little green pod,

V as narrated in the exquisite fable of Eugene Field.
These wise little fellows noticed that their little
world was all green, and they themselves green
likewise, and they shrewdly concluded from this that
the whole universe must also be green. But we are

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

The Fundamentals of Geology

not told of their traveling abroad and persisting in
a systematic attempt to explain all subsequently ob-
served facts in terms of their theory.

The accompanying photograph (Fig. 4), which
shows a part of this Fairholme Mountain as viewed

Fig. 4-

(Photograph t>y RoUin T. Chaniberlin)
-CAMBRIAN LIMESTONE RESTING ON CRETACEOUS SHALE

Looking north from near Kananaskis Station, Alberta. This is the eastern
part of the great mountain mass that the theory says has been pushed up into
its present position, though the limestone rests on the shale conformably, as
described in the text.

from near Kananaskis Station on the railway, is
supplied by the courtesy of Prof. E. T. Chamberlin,
of the University of Chicago, who examined this re-
gion in the summer of 1910, and who says that he
found **what appears to be a continuation of this
same thrust plane a hundred miles further south, on

Digitized by

Google

Turned Upside Down; Fact Number Three 89

the Crow's Nest branch of the Canadian Pacific
Railway." Thus according to the common theory,
this whole region of country must have been pushed

DEVONIAN

CRETACEOUS--^

(After R. G. McConnell)

Fig. 5 — Section along South Fork of Ghost River, being nearly identical with
the part shown in the previous photograph, showing relations of Cretaceous to
Cambrian.

bodily forward for a distance of many miles to get
these rocks into their present position.

But before describing this area in detail, we must
go some fifty miles still further south, or over a
hundred and fifty miles south of the mountain de-
scribed above by McConnell, to a region in Northern
Montana, a map of which is given in Fig. 8. The

(After G. M. Dawson)

Fig. 6 — Crow's Nest Mountain, Alberta, from a high ridge about three miles
east. The summit of this mountain, like that of Chief Mountain, fLfty miles or
so to the south, which it very much resembles, consists of Algonkian limestone
resting on Cretaceous "in a nearly horizontal attitude." (G. M. Dawson.)

light part of this map represents the Cambrian or
Pre-Cambrian rocks, which, according to the theory,
have also been pushed bodily for many miles over

Digitized by

Google

Digitized by

Google

Turned Upside Doivn; Fact Number Three 91

l^l^l^l on top of the Cretaceous shales, repre-

g^^^s'^l sented by the darker portion. The ac-

Itrtlslfl companying photograph of Chief Moun-

i*g^^®* tain (Fig. 7), which stands somewhat

s'^«S|;^| alone just south of the 49th parallel,

i'l^'^^'^^ gives a typical view of these two sets

l^'ifll^^ of rocks, and shows how much more

lalcoSj'a natural it would be to think that these

«*8§,*f2 rocks represent an ordinary position,

'l^^^s* than to imagine such a gigantic earth /

ig|§||| movement as the theory demands. Figs.

I*"!!"!!^ 9, 10, 11, and 12 show the appearance of

^^i^llgi other mountain masses in this same gen-

^S^li."! ^i*al area; and these mountains also must

l^gsZlli liave been part of this great mass pushed

ll^s'gQil forward over the Cretaceous.

Space forbids us to quote at length

^-s-^g|g from the very interesting paper of Mr.

|^|S|a|'S Bailey Willis (Bulletin Geological So-

^J|8||S| ciety, Vol. 13, pp. 305-352), from which

'^i|s^^|g this map and some of the accompanying

iSg^^'^fl* photographs are taken. He estimates

^§g's«||§ that the Cretaceous rocks underneath the

li§|i Jl top of Chief Mountain are 3,500 feet

al*^ .ll'sl thick ; while the so-called thrust plane,

S'^ll^-2's ^^ says, *4s essentially parallel to the

S||||i|| bedding" of the upper series. (P. 336.)

|®^jgil|^ This apparently is true not only of the seg-

^ISfiSgO^ ments of thrust surface beneath eastern Flat-

•l^*|%S top, Yellow, and Chief mountains, but also of

g'^lo©^®^ the more deeply buried portion which appears

?|>»^S||§ to dip with the Algonkian strata into the

»3-2fl^Hsp syncline. While observation is not complete,

.2 si's 2/^ I it may be assumed on a basis of fact that thrust

Digitized by LjOOQIC

92 The Fundamentals of Geology

surfaces and bedding are nearly parallel over extensive
areas. — P. 336.

A further interest attaches to this region from
the fact that it contains the main continental divide
between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as
between Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, for
streams from this region join the Saskatchewan, the
Missouri, and the Columbia River. Thus the very
roof of North America consists of a cap of Algonkian
or Pre-Cambrian limestone resting in what looks
like a perfectly natural way on Cretaceous beds. The
area shown on the accompanying map is nearly
thirty miles from north to south, but the region thus
affected really extends considerably further south
(see F. H. H. Calhoun, Professional Paper No. 50,
p. 10) ; while instead of the seven miles spoken of
by McConnell, which is given as the ** displacement"
that has been ^'observed,'' Willis says that **an
equivalent amount" of movement underground must
be taken into consideration. (P. 341.) Marius R.
Campbell, of the Washington Survey Staff, who
visited this region in the summers of 1910 and 1911,
reports positive evidence that this great ** over-
thrust" is ''not less than fifteen miles" from east
to west, ''almost every foot of which is clearly ex-
posed." (Letter to the author.)

But all this is only the beginning of the story.
We must return to the north, to note again the
Crow's Nest Mountain, which G. M. Dawson, of the
Canadian Survey, says "in its structure and general
appearance much resembles Chief Mountain" ("An-
nual Report," 1885, Part B, p. 67), its summit

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Turned Upside Down; Fact Number Three 93

consisting of this same type of limestone, ^4n a
nearly horizontal attitude," resting on the Creta-
ceous. (See Figs. 6 and 7.) And it is this region
that Professor Chamberlin says ** appears to be a
continuation" of the thrust plane a hundred miles
further north described by McConnell.

Fig. 8 — map OP GREAT PLAINS AND FRONT RANGES
NORTHWEST MONTANA
(Reduced from Browning and Chief Mountain atlas sheets, U. S. Geological
Survey.) Shaded area, Cretaceous rocks; white area, Algonkian rocks. Accord-
ing to the current theory, all these Algonkian or Pre-Cambrian rocks must have
been pushed up on top of the Cretaceous.

We have now seen the characteristic features of
this vast area, north, and south, and near the middle,
though it really extends another hundred miles fur-
ther north, as we shall presently see. Parts of the
intervening area are not yet (1912) well explored,

Digitized by

Google

%:^^^v--'^"

llli^S^^S..-^

'•$

»:

**^

Jt- Vl

',*^.

^^''•s;:^.' ;■•(•• t»

(Baitey WiUxa)
Fig. 9 -- GOATHAUNT, LEWIS RANGE

A spur of Mount Cleveland, Montana. The view is looking northwest, and
is a typical exposure of Siyeh limestone, a subdivision of the Algonkian; portion
of cliff in view about 1,200 feet high; base below view descends nearly vertically
as far again. Goat trails extend across clift' face. This mountain is directly
west of Chief Mountain, and according to the theory, is a part of the great mass
that has been pushed up on top of the Cretaceous.

Digitized by LjOOQIC

Turned Upside Down; Fact Number Three 95

but so far as it has been examined the same condi-
tions are found to prevail. The very same litholog-
ical and geological structures recur over all this
region with the persistence of a repeating decimal.
The tops of the mountains, often their entire masses,
consist of the same jointed limestones and argillites,
like the tops of Chief and Crow's Nest mountains,
which by the erosion of the soft underlying shales
are left standing in rectangular, cathedral-like masses,
easily recognizable as far off as they can be seen.
(See Fig. 9.) And all around these Cambrian or
Pre-Cambrian limestone mountains, wherever the
rivers have eroded the valleys down deep enough,
they have laid bare the soft Cretaceous beds, which
dip gently under the Palaeozoic limestone or underlie
it horizontally, exactly like any normal stratification
plane. A more positive rebuke to the theory of
geological succession could not well be imagined,
for these Palaeozoic rocks are supposed to be the
very ** oldest" rocks on earth, while the Cretaceous
are pretty nearly the '^youngest''; and ycft were it
not for the exigencies of the theory, this whole
region would be considered as only an ordinary
example, on rather a large scale, of nearly hori-
zontal stratification cut up by erosion into moun-
tains of circumdenudation, with of course occasional
instances of minor disturbances here and there, as
are always to be found in an area of this extent.

West of the Fairholme Mountain, spoken of
above, in the latitude of the Bow River and the
Canadian Pacific main line, lies a long, narrow

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

CO ^

^ .2

b Pi

PQ o

s ^

52; =>

5 «

Digitized by

Google

Turned Upside Down; Fact Number Three 97

valley of Cretaceous beds, sixty-five miles long, called
the Cascade Trough on the accompanying map.
(Frontispiece.) The beds of this Trough run up to
the abrupt bases of Mount Bundle (Fig. 10) and Cas-
cade Mountain on the west, the latter being a part of
the Sawback Range. In this latitude, or just north of
the 51st parallel, the total width of this wonderful
area is about twenty-five miles, and there is only one
Cretaceous valley running north and south. Some
thirty miles farther south, there are two parallel
Cretaceous Valleys, and in some places three ; while
just south of the 50th parallel,, at Gould's Dome,
there are five parallel ranges of these Palceozoic moun^
tains, with four Cretaceous valleys intervening, one
of them, the Crow's Nest Trough, being ninety-five
miles long, as stated by Dawson.

It would not be profitable to enter into further
details, but we ought now to get a broad view of
the total area involved. The Hon. R. W. Brock,
director of the Canadian Geological Survey, informs
the writer that ^^all the Rocky Mountain tract up to
the Yellowhead Pass may safely be included" in
this great faulted area, adding, ^* North of the Yel-
lowhead it no doubt extends, but we have not suf-
ficiently detailed information to set boundaries." Its
southern limits are almost equally indefinite. Dr.
George Otis Smith, director of the United States
Survey, informing the writer that this great ^^fault,"
as it is termed, has been traced ^^ southward to the
crossing of the Great Northern Railway, and it is
probable that it extends still further to the south,

7 — Geology-
Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fig. 11 — mount GOULD, LEWIS RANGE,

(Fram WiXLis)
MONTANA

From South Fork of Swift Current, looking southwest. From lake to summit,
4,670 feet, or 9,541 feet above sea-level. This mountain also consists of Algonkian
limestone, and is a part of this immense tract of country that has li'^veled. eAsU
ward, according to the theory; for it overlies the CretaceouBigitized by VjOOV IV^

Turned Upside Down; Fact Number Three 99

as a fault of similar character has been noted at the
head of Sun River, west of Great Falls,'' near the
central part of Montana. Thus this region, which is
rapidly becoming famous in geological circles as the
** great faulted area,'' must be about three hundred

(From Willitt)
Fig. 12 — NORTH SIDE OF SWII-^T CURRENT VALLEY
NEAR ALTYN, MONTANA

Looking east. Typical Altyn Limestone cliff (Algonkian), overlying Benton
(Cretaceous) shale. Though these rocks seem to be in a perfectly normal posi-
tion relative to one another, the theory demands that the upper rocks must have
been pushed up on top of the lower.

and fifty miles long, north and south, with an average
width of perhaps twenty miles at least from east to
west, making a total area of some seven thousand
miles. Further investigation is more likely to in-
crease this area than to diminish it, though it is quite

Digitized by

Google

lOO The Fundamentals of Geology

possible that our more detailed knowledge may find
occasional interruptions to the marvelously uniform
character of these Palaeozoic rocks on top of the
Cretaceous, especially since there is in some places
a regular alternation of Palaeozoic and Cretaceous,
as has occurred in the Alps and elsewhere. (See
pp. 74, 85 of this volume.) Besides, complications
and misinterpretations may be expected to arise from
the fact that the resemblance between the Creta-
ceous shales and the Banff series of the Palaeozoic
is '*so close that it becomes impossible in many
places to separate them without fossil evidence,"
as R. Gr. McConnell naively remarks of the portion of
this region that he describes. For throughout the
central portion of this area, as this author declares,
*' notwithstanding the complete absence of all the in-
tervening formations, jio unconformity was anywhere
detected between them, except where faulting is
known to have occurred," — that is, where they are
found in the upside-down order. **The apparent
conformity is perfect, even in the clearest sections,
and the difficulty in drawing an exact line between
the two series is further increased by the close litho-
logical resemblance" between them. {Annual Re-
port, 1886, Part D, p. 17.)

The very obvious naturalness of these Palaeozoic
rocks resting upon the Cretaceous, as well as the
immense area involved, makes this example a crucial
^ one in disproof of this whole theory of life succes-
sion. Why should such facts be blinked or tortured
to save such a theory? I have nothing at all to say

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Turned Upside Down; Fact NUmVef Three 101

against real faults or real folds in the strata, when
they can actually be seen and proved objectively.
Every one who has traveled with his eyes open in
any mountain region on earth, even though he be
not a geologist, knows that there are such things
as faults and such things as folds, though they are
usually to be measured in feet and yards, instead
of in miles and degrees of latitude and longitude.
But when the upper strata have every objective ap-
pearance of being now in their normal position, so
much so that they may even appear to be con-
formable to the beds below them over miles of area,
and the only suggestion of a thrust fault or an over-
thrust fold is that the fossils are here in the wrong
order, every law of inductive reasoning commands
us to take the objective fact instead of the a priori
theory.

In the calm safety of our libraries we may talk
composedly of an immense mountain region having
been *' turned upside down over an area of 450 square
miles," as Dana does, or of several thousand square
miles of mountains having traveled bodily forward
for fifteen or twenty miles; but those who speak
thus are surely using words without any mental
equivalent. In short, it is time to speak out what
every reader has already said in his innermost soul,
that such great earth movements would be incredible
in the face of any amount of evidence; but when
the physical evidence is all against them, and noth-
ing demands such incredible dislocations except an
otherwise highly questionable theory, common sense

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Digitized by

Google

Turned Upside Down; Fact Number Three 103

tells us to throw away such a theory and adopt the
most obvious explanation of the facts, namely, that
these rocks were really laid down in the order in
which we find them.

But why may we not be allowed to say that these
rocks are in a normal order, and that the Creta-
ceous were throughout this whole area generally
deposited before the Palaeozoic? Is modern science
to be eternally obliged to say that William Smith
and Cuvier and Werner were gifted with a super-
natural knowledge of how the rocks must always be
found to occur in other parts of the world? And
whenever they are found in the contrary order, must
we believe any incredible fiction in plain contradiction
to our eyesight and common sense rather than im-
pugn the memory of such supernatural wisdom?
How much of the earth's crust tvould we have to
find in this upside-down condition in order to dis-
credit this life succession theory? What conditions
of the strata could be found to convince modern scien-
tists that we have for all these years been following
a fantastic theory and an unscientific method? Lan-
guage fails me; for I don't know what would con-
vince the world, if this evidence here in Alberta and
Montana is insufficient.

It is narrated that in one of Daniel Webster's
legal battles the point in dispute turned upon the
differences or the identity of two car-wheels. The
opposing counsel, by a learned and eloquent address,
had pictured to the jury a number of minute and
subtile distinctions that he claimed could be made

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

104 The Fundamentals of Geology

between them. When Webster's turn came, he pul-
verized the work of the previous hour or more with
one sentence: ^^But there they are, gentlemen; look
at them!'' And so I am sure that all the labored
and fantastic explanations that are given to account
for how these Palaeozoic limestones came to be on
top of these Cretaceous beds, ought to vanish into
thin air in the presence of one illuminating glance at
them lying here in apparently normal sequence, often
parallel to one another in bedding, 'and over miles
and miles of country looking exactly like perfect
conformability. Not only common sense, but every
principle of sound logic and true Baconian science,
forbids our surrendering the positive evidences of
our senses to save an out-of-date theory.

In the Southern Appalachian Mountains of East-
ern Tennessee and Northern Greorgia, '*an almost
identical structure" (McConnell) is to be found, Car-
boniferous strata dipping gently to the southeast,
like an ordinary monocline, under Cambrian or Lower
Silurian, one of these so-called faults having a re-
ported length of 375 miles (Bailey Willis, Greological
Survey, Annual Eeport, Vol. 13, p. 228), while in
another instance the upper strata are said to have
been pushed something like eleven miles in the direc-
tion of the thrust. (C. W. Hayes, Bulletin Geolog-
ical Society of America, Vol. 2, pp. 141-154.) These
conditions, we are told, **have provoked the wonder
of the most experienced geologists" (Willis, op, cit,,
p. 228), because of the perfectly natural appearance
of the surfaces of the strata thus affected; or as

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Turned Upside Down; Fact Number Three 105

the latter writer puts it, *'The mechanical effort is
great beyond comprehension, but the effect upon the
rocks is inappreciable,'' and ** the fault dip is often
parallel to the bedding of one or the other series of
strata" {Id,, p. 227) ; or in other words, the so-called
thrust plane looks exactly like an ordinary strati-
fication plane between conformable strata.

"Without entering into further details here, we
must pass over to the Highlands >of Scotland, where,
as Dana says,* *^a mass of jtlfe oldest crystal-
line rocks, many miles in lengtfi from north to
south, was thrust at least ten miles westward over
younger rocks, part of the latter f ossilif erous ; " and
he further declares that ''the thrust planes look like
planes of bedding, and were long so considered/'
('^Manual," pp. Ill, 534.) -

Geikie quite naturally devotes several pages in
his *' Text-Book" to a description of these condi-
tions in the Highlands; but from one of his first
reports on these observations, published in Nature
(Nov. 13, 1884, pp. 29-35), we get some much more
suggestive details.

The thrust planes, he says, are difficult to be ** dis-
tinguished from ordinary stratification planes, like
which they have been plicated, felted, and denuded.
Here and there, as a result of denudation, a portion
of one of them appears capping a hilltop. One
almost refuses to believe that the little outlier on
the summit does not lie normally on the rocks below
it, but on a nearly horizontal fault by which it has
been moved into its place."

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

^1 >^^

1 : ^

Fio. 14 — MAP OF GLARUS AND VICINITY, SWITZERLAND

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Turned Upside Down; Fact Number Three 107

Speaking of some similar conditions, in Ross
Shire, which he himself, before the fossil evidence
had been worked out, had described as naturally con-
formable, he declares:

Had these sections been planned for the purpose of de-
ception, they could not have been more skilfully devised, . . .
and no one coming first to this ground would suspect that
what appears to be a normal stratigraphical sequence is not
really so.

'*When a geologist finds" things in this con-
dition, he says, ^*he may be excused if he begins
to wonder whether, he himself is not really stand-
ing on his head."

But it would be unprofitable to pursue this sub-
ject further, no matter how entertaining it might
be in illustrating the ludicrous, childlike faith in
this theory exhibited by illustrious men who are
otherwise clear reasoners. Those who wish to do
so may find additional examples of the strata in these
upside-down conditions throughout the larger works
of Dana, Le Conte, Prestwich, Geikie, and Suess, to
say nothing of the more detailed statements given in
the numerous government reports of all the English-
speaking countries, and ponderous monographs in
German and French by such men as Heim, Schardt,
Lugeon, Rothpletz, etc. The latter, for example,
describes how, in the district about Glarus, an enor-
mous mass of mountains must have * traveled from
east to west a distance of twenty-five miles from
the Rhine Valley to the Linth," while in the east of
Switzerland the '*Rhaetikon Mountain mass trav-

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

^^^^^l^^i^^^^^^ * ^^^^^^^^^i^^fl.

^^1-

^B* 5^

V^^^'

i' J

^^^^ILa^lB'

^^^

^^^^H

[ nfllx^'^E

■ ^ ar '

A'vil

^^C[ .^^^^^^1

^A^

^l^^r '^^^^^^K^f-

7 ^Ai

k ji

^hlJI

*«iHKfi

fj|

''^flK

M^^^^^^^^^^^tflt ^''.^^

^^^^H^^^r^^^^^l

Q
Jz;
<l

CQ*

Jz;
o

Jz;
<

Sz;

M
I

Digitized by

Google

Turned Upside Down; Fad Number Three 109

eled from the Montafon Valley to the Rhine Valley,
\ about nineteen miles from east to west.'' {Nature,
Jan. 24, 1901, p. 294.)

The following summary of the situation in the
Alps is given by Prof. Albert Heim, in an address
at Zurich in 1907:

As in Glarus (Pigs. 14 and 15) the valleys are cut down
into the young Tertiary rocks, while the mountain peaks are
crowned with the old Permo-Garboniferous (Sernifit), so
also, for example, the Nikolai Valley is cut down through the
Jurassic and the Triassic, and the old crystalline schists form
in the Matterhorn (Fig. 16), Dent Blanche, and Weisshorn
the overlying cover odP a northerly directed overthrust fold.
And in the very same manner the valleys of Schams and
Rheinwald cut into Triassic schists, while the cliif-like tops
round about are crowned with faulted caps of other older
rocks of southern origin (for example, the limestone moun-
tains of Spliigen). Thus we see that very many mountains
of our Alps are composed, in their upper formations, of
^ faulted older rocks which lie on top of younger ones without
any direct connection with the bottom. . . . These flat-lying
faults, of which the Glarus folds were the first to be dis-
covered, are a universal phenomenon in the Northern and .the
Central Alps, and their origins lie in the central and the
southern regions. — ^^Der Bau der Schweizeralpen,'^ p, 17.

The Carnegie Research Expedition in Asia re-
cently reported one of these great *' folds" across
. Northern China for the distance of 500 miles, but
say that **to what extent these structures are gen-
eral in North China is not yet determinable." (** Re-
search in China," Vol. 2, p. 90.) But enough! What
we really need is not more facts along this line, but
a more candid, a more truly scientific attitude of
mind in considering the facts we already have. For

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

<3
>
O

o
IS
o

Digitized by

Google

Turned Upside Down; Fact Number Three 111

in no other branch of natural science is there such
a theory still surviving from the past age of sub-
jective speculation, which is still treated as a Pro-
crustean bed to which all subsequently discovered
facts must be compelled at any cost to conform, — not
another one for which otherwise competent observers
will thus freely sacrifice their common sense. When
the dividing line between two sets of strata ''acts
exactly like the line of contact between two nearly
horizontal formations," so much so that in a natural
section cut out by a river the two ''appear to suc-
ceed one another conformably,'' surely a calm judi-
cial mind, divested of all theoretical prejudice, in-
stead of talking about these conditions having been
planned by nature "for the purpose of deception,''
will find no difficulty at all in believing that these
rocks were really laid down in the order in which
we now find them, the "younger" first and the
"older" afterwards; and only one under the hypnotic
spell of a preconceived theory would, at the sugges-
tion of such a fact, begin "to wonder whether he
himself is not really standing on his head."

Digitized by VjOOQIC

CHAPTER VI

Fact Number Four

After what has been proved in the previous
pages, and especially in the last chapter, the author
feels that he owes an apology to the intelligent reader
for pursuing this line of argument further. It is
too much like mutilating an enemy already dead.
For in the light of the facts already brought for-
ward, the scheme of chronological ages is seen to be
not only unproved, but impossible and absurd. And
yet since the plan of the present volume embraces a
complete review of the whole question in such a way
that the subject will never need to be reopened, we
beg leave to present one more fact, — very slight,
indeed, compared with some already presented, and
yet enough to have occasioned no little discussion
among perplexed geologists, and of considerable im-
portance in rounding out a full discussion of these
successive ages.

There is only one class of agents now working
upon the rocks of the globe which have been in busi-
ness continuously ever since the dry land appeared,
and which have left us a legible record of approxi-
mately the amount of business they have been doing
all these centuries. And my Fact Number Four,
which will complete this line of argument in illus-

112

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fact Number Four 113

trating the antagonism between the facts of the rocks
and the theory of life succession, is that the rivers
of the world, which of course are the agents to which
I have referred, in traveling across the country, act
precisely as if they knew nothing of the varying ages
of the rocks, but on the contrary treat them all alike,
as if they were of the same age, and as if they began
sawing at them all at the same time. Of course it
is evidently in only a few cases where the records are
so free from ambiguity as to be quite incapable of
being misunderstood; that is, the cases of rivers
with steep rocky gorges, or those that cut through
mountain ranges. But there are several such rivers
in the world, and they all seem to tell the same story.
The famous Colorado River is a good example.
(Fig. 19.) It flows from *' younger" strata into
^ ^* older'' in its deep cutting across the Arizona pla-
teau.* That is, the rocks in the lower part of this
\ river are *^ older" than those further up toward its
source. Stated in terms of the current theory, this
means that when the region of country abojit the
lower part of this river's course first became dry
land, the upper part was still sea, and that thus
there was no such river in existence here until the
very '^youngest" of these rocks was formed. For
otherwise the river must have started running from
the sea toward the dry land, that is, running up-hill.
Stated in terms neutral as to theory, it means that
' the whole of this region of country, drained by this

*See Zittel, '^ History of Geology/' pp. 210, 211.
8 — Geology

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

P5
O

:?;

Eh
O
W

iJ
<J
W
OQ

Q
Q

Digitized by

Google

Fact Number Four 115

large river, with its rocks of many varying **ages,"
was all elevated practically as it is now before this
river began its work of erosion. It treats all these
rocks as if they were of the same age, and as if it
began sawing at them all at the same time."

Also its companion, the Green Eiver, cuts through
the Uinta Eange in the same manner. Similar condi-
tions occur on the Danube, and in the river courses
of the Himalayas, and elsewhere.

In the case of the Colorado, Zittel says that * ^ Pow-
ell 's explanation of the apparent enigma is that, after
the river had eroded its channel, rocks were uplifted
in one portion of its course, but so slow was the rate
of uplift that the river was enabled to deepen its
channel, either proportionately or more rapidly, so
that it was never diverted from its former course."

It was by similarly cunning inventions that the
early writers on astronomy, alchemy, and medicine
evaded the force of accumulated facts which told
against their absurd theories.

We have now completed our survey of the strictly
stratigraphical phases of this question, and have

'Practically the same thing might be said of the great breaks or
faults in the strata. **They affect the whole mass of rocks in almost
every instance where they occur, instead of being limited by the
boundaries of particular formations." (George Young, in an address
before the British Association, 1838.) But it is more emphatically
true of the shore-lines that surround all the continents. They are the
same on Archaean, Carboniferous, Cretaceous, or Tertiary coasts in-
differently. To quote a few words from Suess: *'A11 the relics of
ancient shore-lines of which we have made mention are always hori-
zontal, and absolutely independent of the structure of the coasts, . . .
and extend around all coasts and under every latitude in complete
independence of the structure of the continents." (**The Face of
the Earth," Vol. 2, p. 550.)

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

/^^

aj3

« o

f ^ S ^

II g
II s

X
W

r 2

-^
02

« 3

^ o

Eit OQ

? =3 fe ^

"c * * 0? Q -tf 1:?
■~ mi rf ^ 0) 5

H- ** *j 80 © »H

'B,

■2 £ * § ^'►2 S

S . T W >H — «

-, ^ "

E t'^

S •'^'^
fi-^ oi ^ a.

£ In U rt "^ O

u ^^x*^^ 5 - s

F « 5

^ 08 0)

I o 08 q ©i; <" -

cogS

lei's

§5 '2'

■ « S o ^•'^•'^ I
iHH ^ «'«.9 d M ^
I o s a» 2 H 'o

©"S ^ 08

I. .^ « ©

c ©.oB-E*© « I
fe.S o o^^ps

dil:

* 2 S oi Ji S *

o. > © •'^

'X © "^ be fl ® 08 .2
.H ^ U ^ 45

^55o02g.S^

Digitized by

Google

Fact Number Fbur'^' 117

found four very remarkable priricipleB about the
rocks, which I wish to summarize here before pro-
ceeding further:

1. The ''broad fact,'' as stated by Zittel and
Dana, that any kind of rocks whatever, that is, con-
taining any kinds of fossils, even the ''youngest,'"

^ may rest on the ArchaBan, and may thus in position,
as also in texture and appearance, resemble the very
oldest deposits on the globe.

The converse of this is also true, for the very
"oldest" rocks may consist of muds "scarcely in-
durated" and sands "still incoherent."

2. That any kind of beds may rest in such per-
fect conformability on any other so-called "older"
fossiliferous beds over vast stretches of country
that, "were it not for fossil evidence, one would

\. naturally suppose that a single formation was being
dealt with," while "the vast interval of time inter-
vening is unrepresented either by deposition or
erosion." The youngest seem to have followed the
oldest in quick succession.

3. That in very many cases and over many
hundred square miles of country these conditions
are exactly reversed, and such very "ancient" rocks
as Cambrian limestones are on top of the compara-

^ tively "young" Cretaceous, while the line between
them "acts exactly like the line of contact of two
nearly horizontal formations," and in a natural sec-
tion made by a river the two "appear to succeed one
another conformably." To any one ignorant of the

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Digitized by

Google

Fact Number Four 119

theory of life succession they have every appear-
ance of having been deposited as we find them.

In short, this and the preceding generalization
may be combined into the following comprehensive
law, which I shall venture to call the Law of Con-
formable Stratigraphical Sequence, and which is by
all odds the most important law that has yet been
discovered in connection with this whole subject of
stratigraphical geology :

Any kind of fossiliferous rock may occur con-
v, formably on any other kind of fossiliferous rock,
old or young.'

4. That the rivers of the world, in cutting across
the country, completely ignore the varying ages of
the rocks in the different parts of their courses, and
act precisely as if they began sawing at them all at
the same time.

Now I know not what additional fact can be de-
manded or imagined to complete the demonstration
that there is no particular order in which the fossils
can be said to occur as regards succession in time.
And since the only shadow of an objective argument
ever put forth to defend the life succession has been

* In the light of what we have now learned regarding the funda-
mental methods and processes of geology, how absurd appears the
following news item regarding a very estimable lady, whose name need
not be given here: '*In 18 — she accompanied her husband [a promi-
nent geologist] to Newfoundland, where they worked out the key to
the Cambrian formations of the North American continent.'' (Nature,
August 3, 1911.) With just as much confidence of accuracy A. G.
Werner, in his little district of Germany, "worked out the key*' to
the rocks of all the rest of the world. Thanks to the wide-spread
knowledge of the principles of Bacon and Newton, such things can not
much longer masquerade in the garb of inductive science.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

120 The Fundamentals of Geology

that the fossils always occur in the same relative
order of sequence, we find that this solitary argument
is false in toto. It is a good deal like the problem
proposed by Charles II to the bishops, — why a
dead fish increases the weight of a glass of water

^ in which it is contained, while a live fish does not.
Considerable learned discussion was expended over
the subject, until some one suggested the plan of
trying it by actual experiment and seeing if it were

^ really so, with the result, of course, that the whole
thing was only another joke of the Merry Monarch.
But the geological problem is very similar. For
nearly , a century the learned world has said that
there has been a succession of life on the globe
because the rocks always occur in a certain relative
order of sequence. But in the light of modern
discovery it turns out that they don't do anything
of the kind. We really find them in every conceiv-
able order of relationship to one another. Hence
it is hard to see how this a priori doctrine of life
succession, so utterly destitute of defense as an
abstract idea, and now found to be at variance with
a thousand observed facts, will longer be able to
hold up its head in the company of the true in-
ductive sciences.

I appeal to my fellow workers in other lines of
natural science, not so much to geologists, but to
chemists, physicists, and astronomers, to workers
in medicine, jurisprudence, and philosophy, whether
we do not have here a sufficient amount of unequivo-
cal evidence to call for a complete reconstruction

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Fact Number Four 121

of the common geological theory of the order in
which the rocks are to be found. Surely the thou-
sands of persons who are iamiliar with scientific
methods of reasoning as employed in all the other
departments of knowledge can not much longer stand
patiently by while such a travesty on Baconian
methods usurps the place of sensible adherence to
proved facts in these fundamental questions of geol-
ogy. They must soon rise up in their might and
say that such a burlesque on inductive methods
must cease forthwith.

Of course, in all this I am dealing only with
relative time. This line of argument is wholly in-
dependent of the question of how long it has been
since any or all of the geological changes took place.
The question of length of time since has nothing
whatever to do with the logic of the case. This
line of argument merely gets us forever rid of the
life succession theory as a possible hypothesis; and
now, admonished by past mistakes, we must begin
over again and reconstruct the science of geology in
the light of all that modern science has discovered.

It is true, some fossiliferous deposits, metamor-
phosed almost beyond recognition, and buried deep
beneath thousands of feet of subsequent deposits,
have enough appearance of remote antiquity about
them in all conscience. But to increase this antiquity
by saying that other equally prodigious masses of
rocks elsewhere were deposited long after these, or
by pointing to still other deposits in another region
which are said to be older than any of the others.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

122 The Fundamentals of Geology

is a most illogical and unscientific procedure. I
thoroughly sympathize with the attitude of mind
that stands dazed at the length of time occupied in
any considerable geological event, when considered
on the basis of the uniformitarian action of the ele-
ments, and without that broad view of the fossil world
as a whole that can frame a true induction from the
sum of all our ascertained facts. But some other
word than * ' sympathy ' ' is needed to describe my feel-
ings for the mind that can, in the face of the prin-
ciples here brought out, continue to arrange the
rocks off in exact chronological sequence over the
whole earth, and treat these successive ages as if
they had an objective validity. I fear I might trans-
gress the bounds of parliamentary language were I
to attempt to use the appropriate word to describe
such a proceeding; for however much indulgence
we ought to manifest for a time toward those who
have grown up accustomed to the current theories,
the time is not far distant when we shall look back
upon all these exact chronological distinctions that
are now made between the different '* horizons" with
little else than amusement and pity.

And surely it is scarcely necessary in this en-
lightened age to point out how completely this vitiates
any biological argument (such as that of Darwinism)
which has incorporated into its system the results of
such illogical reasoning, or which is in any way
dependent upon the conclusions of such a theory of
geology. In view of the laws of evidence, which
every intelligent person is supposed to understand

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fact Number Four 123

nowadays, surely some strange things passed for
scientific proof during the nineteenth century. For,
as we have seen, the earlier geologists did little bet-
ter than assume the succession of life bodily; then
Agassiz and his contemporaries arranged the details
and the exact order of these successive life forms
by comparison with the embryonic life of the mod-
em individual; and now the evolutionists of our day,
led by such men as Fritz MuUer, Spencer, and
Haeckel, with their *^ biogenetic principle,^' prove
their theory of evolution by showing that the em-
bryonic life of the modern individual is only ^*a
brief recapitulation, as it were, from memory,*' of
the (assumed) geological succession in time/ Surely
this will some day make a more amazing record for

* This method of arranging in ascending series the geological types
of life; and placing alongside these the classification series of living
animals, and then correlating with these two purely artificial arrange-
ments the embryonic development of the modern individual as a third
parallel series, has always been considered the culminating argument
for evolution. But if, in addition to the exposure of the geological
series given in the previous pages, we consider (1) how Agassiz, in
the early days of geology, soon after the historic discoveries of Von
Baer regarding embryology, made use of the embryonic development
of each particular group to determine what ought to he the geological
order of the fossils of this group — a custom which has grown with
the passing years until it dominates absolutely this whole field of study;
and if, further, we consider (2) how the modern taxonomic classification
is continually rearranged to bring it into more apparent agreement with
this embryonic measuring line; we may begin to appreciate why such
men as Carl Vogt, Oskar Hertwig, His, and numerous others, with only
a part of the light which we now possess, have discarded this favorite
argument of Haeckel regarding biogenesis, just as T. H. Morgan
in our own country says that it is "m principle false.*' Whatever may
be the real lesson to be learned from the embryonic development, it is
most fantastic and circular reasoning to bring it in as argument for
evolution, considering, the way in which it has been used to build up
the geological series.

Digitized by VjOOQIC

124 The Fundamentals of Geology

posterity than those of phlogiston or the epicycles
of Ptolemy.

If it is now asked, What do the rocks have to tell
us, in view of the fact that they refuse to testify
to a life succession? I can only say that we are not
as yet in a position to decide this question. There
are several other matters connected with the char-
acter ^d mode of occurrence of the fossils, which
are almost equally important with anything already
considered, in forming a true scientific induction re-
garding this matter. These facts must be consid-
ered in subsequent chapters. Already, however, we
can say this much, — that we have in the rocks almost
as complete a world, in some respects vastly more
^^ complete, than the living world of to-day. With the
life succession theory repudiated, we have still to
deal with the fossils themselves which have been
thus systematically classified; but this geological
series becomes only the taxonomic or classification
•series of an older state of our present world, buried
somehow and at some time or times in the remote
past — the how and the when of which we have not
at this stage of the argument the means to deter-
mine.

But I think we are now prepared to enter the
mazes of the biological argument, and to study the
subject of extinct species, which by many is sup-
posed to furnish a line of independent evidence in
favor of the life succession theory.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

CHAPTER VII

Extinct Species

Let us now test the value of this assumed life
succession by another very simple question. In
** Eocene times,'' so we are told, England was a land
of palms, with a semitropical flora and fauna. In
fact at this time, Cycads, Gourds, Proteads (like
the Australian shrubs and trees), the Fig, Cinna-
mon, Screw-pine, and various species of Acacias and
Palms, abounded in England and Western Europe.
Then again, in the Pleistocene deposits of the same
countries, we find various species of Elephant and
Rhinoceros, with a Hippopotamus, Lion, and Hyena,
identical with species now living in the tropics.

Now, how are we to prove that these various
Pleistocene animals did not exist together in these
\ countries at the same time as the Eocene trees and
plants before mentioned?

Lions and Monkeys, Hippopotami and Crocodiles,
with Elephants, Hyenas, and Rhinoceroses, now live
beneath the Palms, Mimosas, Acacias, and other
tropical plants represented in the Eocene and Mio-
cene beds. What is there to hinder us from believ-
ing that they all lived there together in that olden
time? Surely it would be the very irony of scien-
tific fate if forms now so closely connected in life

125

Digitized by VjOOQIC

126 The Fundamentals of Geology

should in death be so divided. Or, to present it in
another form, Why should we be asked to believe
that these Acacias, Cinnamons, Palms, etc., lived and
died ages or millions of years before the Lions, Ele-
phants, Rhinoceroses, and Hippopotami came into
existence to enjoy their shade; and then, after these
unnumbered ages had dragged their slow length along
and vanished into the dim past, and all these semi-
tropical plants had shifted to the tropics or been
turned into lignite, these Lions, Elephants, and Hip-
popotami came into existence in these same localities,
when no such plants existed anywhere in Europe?

Surely we ought to expect some pretty substantial
evidence for such a violation of our universal modern
experience. We generally boast that we have out-
grown the crude ideas of the earlier years of the
science, when they spoke of '* ages'' of limestone
making or of sandstone making; but it seems that
some of us have not yet attained to that broad view
of the essential solidarity of nature in which the
flora and fauna of our world are seen to be just
as indissolubly connected with each other. But na-
ture could as easily be persuaded to produce for a
whole age nothing in the way of rock but limestone
or conglomerate, as to adjust her powers to such an
unbalanced state of affairs as is spoken of above,
with the animals in one age and the complementary
plants in another.

But in considering this question as to why the
Eocene plants and the Pleistocene animals may not
be supposed to have lived contemporaneously to-

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Extinct Species 127

gether, we are brought face to face with the second
supposed argument in favor of there having been
a succession of life on the globe. The answer given
is that all the animals of these ^* early'' Tertiary
beds are extinct species, also very many of the plants ;
while the Hyena, Lion, Hippopotamus, etc., of the
Pleistocene are identical with the living species, and
even the Mammoth is so closely like its nearest sur-
viving relative, the Asiatic Elephant {E. indicus),
that these also might be classed as identical.'

This point ' being considered by many as so im-
portant, and having such a vital connection with the
whole life succession theory, we must go into the
matter somewhat in detail, even at the risk of ap-
pearing rather technical to some.

If the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic strata are often of
enormous extent, spreading in vast sheets over wide
regions, so that their stratigraphical order in any
particular district is quite readily made out, it is
in most cases altogether different with the Tertiary
and Pleistocene deposits. For these resemble one
another so much in everything except their fossils,
and occur so generally in detached and fragmentary
beds, holding no stratigraphical relation to one an-
other, that Lyell devised the plausible plan of dis-
tinguishing them from one another and arranging
them in the accustomed order of successive ages, by
their relative percentages of living and extinct Mol-
lusca. With only unimportant changes, Lyell 's divi-
sions are still followed in classifying the Tertiary

^ See p. 138 of this volume.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

128 The Fundamentals of Geology

and Post-Tertiary beds. Those with all the species
extinct, or less than five per cent living, are classed
as Eocene; those containing few extinct forms, or
nearly all living species, are classed as Pleistocene
or Post-Tertiary. The Miocene and Pliocene repre-
sent the intermediate grades, and all are supposed
to be a true chronological order. It goes without
saying that in actual practise it is often so extremely
difficult to adjust these differences that beds are
assigned to an *' early" or a **late'' division on
general principles by what the literary* critics would
call **tact" or ''intuition,'' rather than by the strict
percentage system, though for these large and im-
portant divisions of Tertiary and Post-Tertiary rocks,
these are absolutely the only professed grounds on
which the subdivisions are distinguished and ar-
ranged in the customary order of time.
In the words of Dr. David Page:

As there is often no perceptible mineral distinction be-
tween many clays, sands, and gravels, it is only by their im-
bedded fossils that geologists can determine their Tertiary
or Post-Tertiary character. — ^^ Intro. Text-Book/' p. 189.

Now to say that a set of beds, ninety-five per
cent of whose fossils belong to extinct species, and
only five per cent are now living, must be vastly
older than another set where these percentages are
reversed — that is, where the species are nearly all
living — seems at first thought an eminently reason-
able idea, and we immediately begin to imagine the
long ages it must have taken for these exceedingly
numerous and apparently vigorous species to wear

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Extinct Species 129

out and become extinct in the alleged ordinary way
by the merciless struggle for existence with forms
more fitted to survive.

But it is hardly necessary to point out that all
this is based on the assumption of uniformity in its
most extreme type, a doctrine which not only denies
that these living forms are merely the lucky sur-
vivors of tremendous changes in which their con-
temporaries perished, but which in essence is taking
for granted beforehand the very point which ought
to be the chief aim of all geological inquiry, namely.

How DID THE GEOLOGICAL CHANGES TAKE PLACE? It

would not be considered a very scientific procedure
for a coroner, called upon to hold a post-mortem, to
content himself with interesting statistics about the
percentage of people who die of old age, fever, and
other causes, while there was clear and decisive
evidence that the poor fellow under examination had
been shot. In this case, as in geology, it is not merely
the result that is wrong, but the whole method of
investigation. For, as in the latter case we don't
want to know how people generally die, but how this
particular person actually did die, so, in our study
of geology, we do not wish to know merely the rate
at which changes of surface and extinctions of species
are now going on, and then project this measure
backward into the past as an infallible guide, but
we wish to know for sure just what changes of this
nature have taken place. A true induction is, I think,
capable of deciding very positively whether or not
the tools of nature have alw^ays worked at the same

9 — Geology

Digitized by VjOOQIC

130 The Fundamentals of Geology

rate and with the same force as at present; and this
method of arranging the fossils in supposed chrono-
logical order on the percentage basis mentioned
above, is only an extreme form of methods claiming
to be inductive which in this age of the world ought
to be considered a shame and a disgrace, because,
as Howorth says, they are based, ''not upon in-
duction, but upon hypotheses," and have *'all the
infirmity of the science of the Middle Ages."

Then again, it occurs to us that this method, of
attaching a time value to percentages of extinct or
living species, would make the subfossil remains
of the Bison on the Western prairies almost infinitely
older than those of the Lion, Hippopotamus, etc., in
the Pleistocene beds of Europe; for (except for
some few specimens artificially preserved, and which
naay be neglected in this connection) the Bison is
to-day practically extinct, while the Pleistocene Mam-
mals are found by the thousand in the proper locali-
ties, and show no signs of surrender in the struggle
for existence. Similar comparisons might be made
between the great wingless Birds of Madagascar,
Mauritius, and New Zealand, and the many cases of
''persistent" forms of Invertebrates which have sur-
vived unchanged from Carboniferous, Silurian, or
Cambrian times, a period of time which, in the lan-
guage of the current geology, means quite a large
fraction of eternity. But all these considerations
show that the mere fact of certain species being ex-
tinct and others being now alive, is no trustworthy
guide in determining the relative age of their remains,

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Extinct Species 131

\^ until we first find out how they happened to become
extinct.

The inquiry as to the how and the when (rela-
tively) is an absolutely essential preliminary in any
such investigation, and is inseparably united in nature
with the general question of how the great geological
changes have taken place in the past. Of course, if
everything like a world catastrophe is a priori denied ;
if, in other words, it is settled from the first that
all these fossils living and extinct did not live con-
temporaneously with each other, the living ones being
simply the lucky survivors of stupendous changes
in which the others perished, — then all pretense of a
scientific investigation of the subject is at an end.

\ If a coroner has it settled beforehand that an accident
or a murder could not possibly have occurred, then
his profession of a candid post-mortem examination
is only a farce; for he does not hold it to find out
anything, since he knows everything essential about
it beforehand. Uniformitarians would certainly make
poor coroners, or for that matter poor investigators
of law, or history, or anything else.

Will some one please give us a reasonable explana-
tion of why the Lion, Hippopotamus, Ehinoceros, and
Elephant shifted from England to the tropics? Or
will they explain how, at this same general time, some
Elephants and Ehinoceroses got caught in the merci-
less frosts of Northern Siberia so suddenly that their
flesh has remained untainted all these centuries, and

V is now, wherever exposed, greedily devoured by the
Dogs and Wolves?

Digitized by VjOOQIC

132 The fundamentals of Geology

An abundant warm-climate vegetation once man-
tled all the polar regions, and its fossils have been
found just about as far north as explorers have
ever gone; while Dana says that *Hhe encasing in ice
of huge Elephants, and the perfect preservation of
the flesh, shows that the cold finally became sud-
denly extreme, as of a single winter's night, and
knew no relenting afterwards. " "" (** Manual," p.
1007.)
\ Now, if no one can deny this sudden change of

climate over half the world or so at least, is it not
extremely unscientific to deny that this same cause,
whatever it may have been, was quite competent to
bring about a good many other changes, and the
extinction of numerous other species, which we are
so often reminded must imply the lapse of untold
ages of time! The economizing of energy, or the
famous law of parsimony, as stated by Leibnitz, is
quite appropriate in this case, and may be referred
to again in the sequel. The principle upon which I
must here insist is that the mere fact of certain
species being extinct, and others being now alive,
gives no clue whatever to the relative age of these
remains, until we first ascertain why, how, and when
this extinction was brought about. And yet, though
every one admits the fact of tremendous changes of
climate, etc., having intervened between that ancient
world and our own (the true extent and character of
which, as I have said, ought to be the chief point of
all geological investigation), no allowance seems ever

^ Professor Dana has italicized the word ' ' suddenly, ' '

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Extinct Species 133

to be made for this as a powerful cause of extermina-
tion of all forms of life. On what grounds can our
science discriminate among these extinct species, and
fix on only a limited few of them that were made
extinct by this event, and then arrange the others
off on the percentage system, as if such a catastrophe
had never happened?

But in the utter absence of any such explanation
as to how and when, and assuming in the very teeth
of these facts a dead-level uniformitarianism, the
presence of ten, fifty, or a hundred per cent of ex-
tinct forms in a set of beds is manifestly of no sci-
entific value in determining age. It would be many
degrees more reasonable and accurate to arrange all
the Greek and Latin books of the world in chrono-
logical order according to the percentage of their
words which have survived into the English lan-
guage. Indeed, it would be much like a coroner at
the inquest following a railway disaster, attempting
to arrange the exact order in which the various vic-
tims had perished, by the proportionate number of
surviving relatives which each had left behind him.

Such methods in any other line of research would
soon make their advocates the laughing-stock of the
world. The reason why they do not meet this result
in the case of geology is that these methods have been
in vogue so long, and are sanctioned by the prestige
of such illustrious historic names, that they exercise
a browbeating, hypnotic spell over all the younger
students of the science.

And the completely worthless character of such

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

16 17

Pia. 20 — 19 specimens ot Purpura tapillus L., Great Britain, illustrating
variation. 1, Felixstowe, sheltered coast; 2, 3, Newquay, on veined and colored
rock; 4, Herm, rather exposed; 5, Solent, very sheltered; 6, Land's End, exposed
rocks, small food supply; 7, Scillv, exposed rocks, fair food supply; 8, St. Leon-
ard's, flat mussel beds at extreme low water; 9, Robin Hood's Bay, sheltered under
boulders, good food supply ; 10, RhoscoUyn, on oyster bed, 4 to 7 fathoms
(Macandrew) ; 11, Guernsey, rather exposed rocks; 12, Estuary of Conway, very
sheltered, abundant food supply; 13, 14, Robin Hood's Bay, very exposed rocks,
poor food supply; 14, slightly monstrous; 15, 16, 17, Morthoe, ratner exposed
rocks, but abundant food supply; 18, St. Bride's Bay; 19, L. Swilly, sheltered,
but small food supply. (After Oooke, in Cambridge Natural History.)

Digitized by

Google

Extinct Species 135

*^ evidence" of age becomes, if possible, more ap-
parent when we consider that very, many of these
so-called ** extinct" forms are not really distinct
species from their living representatives of to-day.
**It is notorious," says Darwin, **on what excess-
ively slight differences many palaeontologists have
founded their species." And even to-day, in spite of
all that we have learned about variation, little or no
allowance seems ever to be made for the effects of a
greatly changed environment. (Fig. 20.) If the
fossil forms among the Mollusks and other shell-
fish, for instance, are not precisely like the modern
ones in every respect, they are always classed as
separate species, the older forms thus being '* ex-
tinct," in utter disregard of the striking anatomical
differences between the huge Pleistocene Mammals
and their dwarfish descendants of to-day, which for
a hundred years or so were declared positively to be
distinct from one another, but are now acknowledged
to be identical.

Of course no one denies that there are numerous
extinct forms among the Invertebrates, just as we
know there are among the huge Vertebrates of the
Mesozoic and Tertiaries, none of which we moderns
have ever seen alive. Other forms do not appear
familiar to our modern eyes, because larger or of
somewhat different form; but to say that they are
really distinct species from their modern representa-
tives, or to say that no human being ever saw them
alive — that is, that they were not contemporary
with Man — is to make statements utterly incapable

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

136 The Fundamentals of Geology

of proof. Up to about the year 1869 it was stoutly
maintained that man had never seen any of these
fossil forms in life. But no one now maintains this
view, for human remains have since been found along
with undisturbed fossils of the Pleistocene, or even
middle Tertiaries, while the paintings on the cave
walls of Southern France seem conclusive that they
were copied from life when the Mammoth and Eein-
deer lived side by side with Man in that latitude.
Hence the only question now is — and it is the su-
preme question of all modern geology — With how

MUCH OF THAT ANCIENT FOSSIL WOBLD WEBE THESE
EQUALLY FOSSIL MEN ACQUAINTED? If Man lived iu

'^Pliocene" or perhaps ** Miocene times," when a
luxuriant vegetation was spread out over all the
Arctic regions, what possible evidence is there to
show that his companions, the Ehinoceros, Hippo-
potamus, Mammoth, etc., were not also living then
and browsing off just such plants, when the Arctic
frosts caught them in the grip of death, and put
their ** mummies" in cold storage for our astonish-
ment and scientific information? Things which are
equal to the same thing are equal to each other; why
should not the plants and animals contemporary with
the same creature, Man, be just as truly contem-
porary with one another? If Man was contemporary
with the Miocene plants, and the Pleistocene Mam-
mals were contemporary with Man, what is there to
forbid the idea that the Pleistocene Mammals and the
middle Tertiary flora were contemporary with each
other?

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Extinct Species 137

For nearly half a century geologists have never
had the courage to face this problem fairly and
squarely, with all preconceived prejudices about uni-
formity cast aside. Is it possible that all the plants
and animals of the Tertiaries and the Pleistocene
really may have lived together in the satne world
after all? But the trouble would then be that, with
this much conceded, the whole ^^phylogenic series"
would tumble with it, and become only the taxonomic
or classification series of that ancient world with
which these fossil men were acquainted. For if
no single kind of fossil can be proved to be in-
trinsically older than other kinds, and Man is found
fossil as truly as any other form of plant or animal,
how are we to escape the conclusion that this whole
fossil world was a unit, and that these fossil men
were contemporary with one type of life as truly as
with another, or, in other words, contemporary with
all alike? To appropriate the words of one who has
done much to clear the ground for a common-sense
study of geology, I know of nothing against such
an idea save 'Hhe almost pathetic devotibn of a
large school of thinkers to the religion founded by
Hutton, whose high priest was Lyell, and which in
essence is based on a priori arguments like those
which dominated medieval scholasticism and made it
so barren." (Ho worth, ''The Glacial Nightmare and
the Flood," Preface, pages 20, 21.)

Baron Cuvier's work in the line of comparative
osteology has never been surpassed, perhaps never
equaled since, and he is said to have been ''the great-

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

138 The Fundamentals of Geology

est naturalist and comparative anatomist of that, or
perhaps of any time " (Le Conte, *' Evolution and
Religious Thought," pp. 33, 34); and yet he main-
tained till the last that all those which we now call
the Pleistocene Mammals were distinct species from
the modern ones, and it is only of recent years and
with extreme reluctance that many of them have been
admitted to be identical with the ones now living.
All of which tends to show how unreliable are those
assertions commonly found in the text-books about
all the *' species" of the so-called *^ older" rocks being
extinct. It is only with hesitation that such specific
distinctions are surrendered even to-day, though dur-
ing the last few decades a steady progress has been
made in bringing the palaeontology of the higher Ver-
tebrates into line with our increased knowledge of
zoology, thus breaking down many of the specific
distinctions which have long been maintained be-
tween the fossil and the living forms. Even the
Mammoth has been found to have so many char-
acters identical with the modern Elephant of India,
and so complete a gradation exists between the two
types, that Flower and Lydekker acknowledge the
transition from one to the other is ** almost imper-
ceptible," and express a doubt whether they ''can
be specifically distinguished" from one another.
(''Mammals, Living and Extinct," pp. 428, 429.)

But the extreme reluctance with which anything
like a confession of this fact leaks out in our modern
literature can be readily understood when we try
the hopeless task of splicing the environment of the

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Extinct Species 139

modern Elephant with that of the ancient on any
basis of uniformity.

Zittel gives us a peep behind the scenes which
helps us to appreciate the value of a percentage of
*^ extinct" species as a test of the age of a rock
deposit.

He pictures the uncritical work of the earlier wri-
ters on fossil botany, until August Schink (1868-91)
made a great reform in this science; and Zittel de-
clares that **now the author of a paper on any de-
partment" of fossil botany **is expected to have a
sound knowledge" of the systematic botany of re-
cent forms. But he adds, *'It can not be said that
palaeozoology [the science of fossil animals] has yet
arrived at this desirable standpoint."

But he justifies this charge of want of confidence
by saying:

Comparatively few individuals have such a thorough
grasp of zoological and geological knowledge as to enable
them to treat palaeontological researches worthily, and there
has accumulated a dead weight of stratigraphical-palgeon-
tologieal literature wherein the fossil remains of animals
are named and pigeonholed solely as an additional ticket
of the age of a rock deposit, with a wilful disregard of the
much more difficult problem of their relationships in the
long chain of existence.

The terminology which has been introduced in the in-
numerable monographs of special fossil faunas in the
majority of cases makes only the slenderest pretext of any
connection with recent systematic zoology; if there is a
difficulty, then stratigraphical arguments are made the basis
of a solution. [That is, distinct specific pr ev^en distinct ge-
neric names are given to the fossils.] Zoological students are,
as a rule, too actively engaged and keenly interested in
building up new observations to attempt to spell through

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

140 The Fundamentals of Geology

the arbitrary palaeontological conclusions arrived at by many
stratigraphers, or to revise their labors from a zoological
point of view.' — ''History of Geology y^' pp. 375, 376.

Doubtless this scathing impeachment of the com-
mon mania for creating new names for the fossils has
especial reference to the case of the lower forms of
life. For if, in spite of the brilliant and withal care-
ful work of Cuvier, Owen, Wallace, Huxley, Eay
Lankester, and Leith Adams, with numerous others
that might be mentioned, there are still grounds for
such grave doubts of the values of specific distinc-
tions in the case of the Mammals, whose general
anatomy and life history are so well knovm and their
almost countless variations so well studied out, what
must be the confusion and inaccuracy in the case of
the lower Vertebrates, and especially of the Inver-
tebrates, whose general life history in so many in-
stances is so dimly understood, and the limits of their
variations absolutely unknown? (See Figs. 20, 21.)
Eemembering all this, what is our amazement when
we read in this same volume by Professor Zittel

*In the case of living forms, this mania for multiplying new specific
names has met with many a sharp rebuke from our best scientists, and
it is a great pity that the same rational view of the matter is not
consistently extended backward through the whole long line of the
fossU forms. Thus David Starr Jordan gives us a picture of what a
battle it has been to keep the list of Fishes from multiplying unduly:
'*In our fresh water Fishes each species on an average has been de-
scribed as new from three to four times, on account of minor variations,
real or supposed. In Europe, where Fishes have been studied longer
and by more different men, upwards of six or eight nominal species
have been described for each one that is now considered distinct."
C Science Sketches," J. 99.) And again, *^Thus the common Channel
Cat-fish of our rivers has been described as a new species not less than
twenty-five times, on account of differences real or imaginary, but
comparatively trifling in value." (Id., p. 96.)

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Extinct Species 141

(pp. 400, 403, 405) that the tendency among many
modern writers in dealing with these lower forms of
life, is toward the erection of the closest possible dis-
tinctions between genera and species, until recent
palaeontological literature is fairly inundated with
new names; and all this with the purpose, unblush-
ingly avowed, of '* enhancing the value" of such dis-
tinctions as a means of determining the relative ages
of strata, and to '* bring the ontogenetic and phylo-
genetic development" of the various forms ''into
more apparent correspondence." I do not exagger-
ate in the least, as the reader may see by referring
to ZittePs book; though not wishing to make my
readers ''spell through" another quite technical para-
graph, I have refrained from a lengthy quotation.'
But surely we have here a most amazing style
of reasoning. It is another clear case of first as-
suming one's premises, and then proving them by
means of one's conclusion. The method here em-
ployed seems about like this: First assume the suc-

V cession of life from the low to the high as a whole;
then in any particular group, as of Brachiopods or
MoUusks, decide the momentous question as to which
came first and which later in "geological time" by

\ comparing them as to size, shape, etc., with the live
modern individual in its development from the egg

* The following regarding Rafinesque, an early naturalist of the
Eastern States, is too delicious to be omitted in this connection, as we
can see that many modern zoologists and botanists are still somewhat
'RsL^nesque in their methods: '*He once sent for publication a paper
seriously describing, in regular natural history style, twelve new species
\ of thunder and lightning which he had observed near the Falls of the
' Ohio/' (David Starr Jordan, '^Science Sketches, '^ p. 165.)

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

142

The Fundamentals of Geology

to maturity; and lastly, take the results of this al-
leged chronological arrangement to prove just how
the modern forms have evolved. It is a most striking
example of how otherwise intelligent men may be

Fig. 21 — Three stages in the growth of Pteroceras rugosum Sowb., East
Indies, showing the development of the "fingers." (After A. H. Oooke, in Gam-
bridge Natural History.) If these were found fossil, how natural it would be
to place them not merely in separate species, but in distinct general

hypnotized by a theory into blind obedience to its
suggestions and necessities.

Not long ago I had occasion to write to a friend,
a well-known geologist, about a Lower Cambrian
Mollusk which appears strikingly like a modern
species. I give below an extract from his reply
which bears directly upon this point. I withhold

Digitized l3y

Google

Extinct Species 143

the name, but I may say that the author's work

on the Palaeozoic fossils is recognized on both sides

of the Atlantic.

Some geologists make it a point to give a new name to all
forms found in the Palaeozoic rocks ; that is, a name different
from those of modern species. I was taken to task by a noted
palaeontologist for finding a Pupa [a kind of land snail] in
Devonian beds; but I could not find any point in which it
differed from the modern genus.

Of about the same import are the following re-
marks by Angelo Heilprin: '*It is practically cer-
tain that numerous forms of life, exhibiting no
distinct characters of their own, are constituted into
distinct species for no other reason than that they
occur in formations widely separated from those
holding their nearest kin." The real reason at the
bottom of such a proceeding, he freely confesses,
\ *4s based upon the assumption that no species,
after it once became extinct, ever again came into
existence.'' Hence, when a seemingly identical
species reappears in a widely separated formation,
or is found alive in the modern world, a new name
is always given it, to avoid the difficulty of hav-
ing it skip all the intervening ages. He clearly in-
dicates that such things ought not to be done, and
that similar forms, wherever found, ought to be
classed together as the same species, no matter if
it does involve the absurdity of these species skip-
ping long sections of the geological series. He gives
a large number of examples of such skipping among
the Invertebrates; but doubtless even he, expert
conchologist though he is, became discouraged in

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

144 The Fundamentals of Geology

attempting to ** spell through" the flood of new names
referred to by Zittel, for he concludes by the remark :

It is by no means improbable that many of the older
genera, now recognized as distinct by reason of our imperfect
knowledge concerning their true relationships, have in reality
representatives living in the modem seas, — '^The Geograph-
ical and Geological Distribution of Animals,^' pp. 103, 104,
207, 208.

Such disclosures speak volumes for those able
to understand, and lead one to receive with a smile
the familiar assertion that all the species of the
Palaeozoic and other ** older'' rocks are extinct. And
we can now form a truer estimate of the high sci-
entific accuracy of Ly ell's ingenious division of the
Tertiary beds, according to the percentage of living
or ** extinct" MoUusks which they contain.

But from the inherent weakness of the argument
about extinct species as thus revealed, it follows that
chronological distinctions based on any proportionate
number of extinct species have absolutely no scien-
tific value; and hence that the life succession theory
finds no support from these distinctions between
** extinct" and * living" species, just as we have
already seen that it is without a vestige of support
from the stratigraphical argument.

The life succession theory has not a single fact
to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the
result of scientific research, but purely the product
of the imagination, and an imagination ignorant of
a thousand facts that are now matters of common
knowledge.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

CHAPTER VIII

Skipping; Fact Number Five

We have now to deal with another absurdity
involved in the life succession theory, the discus-
sion of which grows naturally out of the subject
of extinct species.

As preliminary to the subject here to be pre-
sented, we must bear in mind that the present ar-
rangement of the fossils in alleged chronological
order, as well as the naming of thousands of typical
specimens, was all well advanced while as yet little
or nothing was known of the contents of the depths
of the ocean, or even of the land forms of Africa,
Australia, and other foreign countries. In most of
the important groups of both plants and animals,
the detailed knowledge of the fossil forms preceded
the knowledge of the corresponding living forms,
just as Zittel says that the theories of the igneous
origin of the crystalline rocks ''had been laid without
the assistance of chemistry" and the knowledge of
the microscopic structure of these rocks.' On pages
128-137 of his ''History," this author shows how,
up to 1820, little or nothing of a scientific character
was known of any of the classes of living animals
' save Mammals, while the geological series was all

* '^History/' pp. 327, 341.

145
10 — Geology

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

146 The Fundamentals of Geology

fixed long before this date/ During the last half-
century, however, the progress of science has been
steadily showing case after case where families and
genera, long boldly said to have been *^ extinct" since
^'Pateozoic time,'' are found in thriving abundance
and in little altered condition in unsuspected places
all over the world. And the point for consideration
here is the manifest absurdity of these inhabitants
of the modern seas and the modern land skipping
all the uncounted millions of years from ** Palaeozoic
times" down to the ** recent"; for though found in
profuse abundance in these ''older" rocks, not a
trace of many of them is to be found in all the
''subsequent" deposits.

The proposition here to be considered and proved
I shall venture to formulate as follows:

There is a fossil world and there is a modern liv-
ing world, the two resembling one another in various
details as well as in a general way; but to get the
ancestral representatives of many modern types,
for example, countless Invertebrates, with other
lower forms of animals and plants, we must go clear
back to the Mesozoic or the Palceozoic rocks, for they
are not found in any of the '^more recenV deposits,

I have already remarked that the blending of the
doctrine of life succession with that of uniformity,
must inevitably have given birth to the evolution
theory, for it is evident that the succession from the

^ Compte, in his classification of the sciences, issued in 1820, denied
a place to geology altogether, because, he said, it was not a distinct
science at all, but only a field for the application of the sciences.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Skipping; Fact Number Five 147

low to the high could only have taken place by. each
type blending with those before and those after it
in the alleged order of time. That such is not the
testimony of the rocks, even when arranged with
this idea in view, is too notorious to need any words
of mine, for it has been considered by many' the
^'greatest of all objections" to the theory of evo-
lution.*

This abruptness in the disappearance of *'old"
and the first appearance of *'new" forms, has
brought into being that ** geological scapegoat," as
James Geikie has called the doctrine of the im-
perfection of the record. But Dawson has well dis-
posed of this argument in the following words:

When we find abundance of examples of the young and old
I of many fossil species, and can trace them through their or-
i dinary embryonic development, why should we not find ex-
amples of the links which bound the species together ? —
^'Modern Ideas of Evolution/^ p. 35.

But it is equally evident that each successive for-
mation of the series ought to contain, in addition to
its own characteristic or **new" species, all the older
forms which survived into any later deposits, or are
now to be found living in our modern world. Such
no doubt was the idea of those of the early geological

•See Le Conte, ** Evolution and Religious Thought," p. 253. Note
also the following from Charles Darwin himself: '* Geology assuredly
does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, per-
haps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged
against my theory.'' (^'Origin of Species,'' p. 342, 1859.)

* This fact is not only an argument against evolution, but its chief
weight lies against the current geological theory of successive ages.
Yet it has been so often mentioned in writings on this subject that it
seems unnecessary to do more than refer to it here.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

148 The Fundamentals of Geology

explorers who discarded Werner's onion-coat theory,
and they tried to arrange their series accordingly.
This reasonable demand is still recognized as good;
and the principle is alluded to by Dana when he
attempts to show how strata might be discovered
and ^'proved'' to be older than the present Lower
Cambrian rocks/

It is, I say, still recognized 'in theory that the
''younger" deposits ought to contain samples of the
''older" types which were still surviving, in addi-
tion to their own characteristic species; but with the
progress of geological, discovery it has long since
been found that such an arrangement is utterly im-
possible. Indeed, it would almost seem as if mod-
ern writers had forgotten the principle altogether.

For there are many kinds of Invertebrates, both
terrestrial and marine, alive in comparative abun-
dance in our modern world, whose fossils are found
only in some of the very oldest rocks, and have
skipped all the rest! Others which date from "Meso-
zoic times" are wholly absent from the Tertiary
rocks, though found abundantly in our modern world.
This I regard as another very crucial test of the
rationality of this idea of a life succession.

Of course there are certain limitations which must
be borne in mind. If we find a series of beds made
up largely of deep sea deposits, we can not reason-
ably expect to find in them examples of all the land
forms of the preceding "ages" which then survived,
nor even of the shallow water types. Nor, conversely,

■See '* Manual/' pp. 487, 488.

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Skipping; Fact Number Five 149

can we demand that, in beds crowded with the re-
mains of the great Mammals and plants, and thus
probably of fresh or shallow water formation, we
ought to find examples of all the marine types still
surviving. We now know that each level of ocean
/ depth has its characteristic types of life, just as do
the different heights on a mountainside. This doc-
trine of ''rock facies" was, I believe, enunciated first
in 1838. Edward Forbes also did much for this same
idea, showing how at the present time certain faunas
. are confined to definite geographical limits and par-
ticular ocean depths. Jules Marcou about 1848 ap-
plied this principle to the fossils, and showed how
such distinctions must have prevailed during geo-
logical time.

Here it seems that we are at last getting a re-
freshing breath of true science; but if carried out in
its entirety, how shall we assure ourselves that in
the long ago very diverse types of fossils, for ex-
ample, Graptolites and Nummulites, or even Trilo-
bites and Mammals, could not have been contempo-
rary with each other f This principle of ''rock
facies," if incorporated into the science in its early
days, would have saved the world from a large share
of the nonsense in our modern geological and zoolog-
ical text-books.

But in answer to any pleadings about the imper-
fection of the record, or any protests about the in-
justice of judging all the life forms of an "age" by
a few examples of local character — that is, of fresh,
shallow, or deep water, as the case may be — the very

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

150 The Fundamentals of Geology

, obvious retort is, Why then is a time value given to
^ such local and fragmentary records? Why, for ex-
ample, should the Carboniferous and associated for-
mations be counted as representing all the deposits
made in a certain age of the world, when we know
from the Cambrian and Silurian and also from the
alleged ''subsequent" Jurassic that there must have
been vast open sea deposits formed contempora-
neously?

As Dana expresses it:

The Lias and Oolyte of Britain and Europe afforded the
first full display of the marine fauna of the world since the
era of the Subearboniferous. Very partial exhibits were made
by the few marine beds of the Coal-measures, still less by the
beds of the Permian, and far less by the Triassie. The seas
had not been depopulated. The occurrence of over 4,000
Invertebrate species in Britain in the single Jurassic period
is evidence, not of deficient life for the eras preceding, but
of extremely deficient records. — ''Manual/' p. 776.

Surely Jthese words exhibit the ''phylogenic se-
ries" in all its native, unscientific deformity. It is
because the Coal-measures, the Permian, and the
Triassie, are necessarily ** extremely deficient rec-
ords" of the total life forms then in the world, that
I am writing this chapter, and this book. But it
seems like perverseness to plead about the imper-
fection of the record, and yet refuse the evidently
complementary deposits when they are presented.
If, as this illustrious author says, *^the seas had not
been depopulated," what would he have us think
they were doing? Were they forming no deposits
all these intervening ages that the Carboniferous,

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Skipping; Fact Number Five 151

Permian, and Triassic were piling up? Were the
Fishes and Invertebrates all immortalized for these
ages, or were they, when old and full of days, trans-
lated to some supermundane sphere, thus escaping
deposit in the rocks? Did the elements continue in
the status quo all these uncounted millions of years?
And if so, how did. they receive notice that the
Triassic period was at last ended, and that it was
time for them to begin work again? I do not like
to appear trivial; but these questions serve to ex-
pose the folly of taking diverse, local, and partial
deposits, and attaching a chronological value to each
of them separately, and then pleading in a piteous,
helpless way about the imperfection of the record.

And yet I can not promise to present a tithe of
the possible evidence, because of two serious handi-
caps. First, the ordinary literature of palaeontology
is silent and meager enough in all conscience, even
though the bare fact may be recorded that a *^ genus''
of the Cambrian or Silurian is '* closely allied" to
some genus now living. It may be even admitted
that ** according to some it is not generically distinct
from the modern genus'' so-and-so; but the authors
never descend below the ** genus," and in most cases
forget to tell us whether or not it occurs in other
*4ater" formations, though of course the presump-
tion is that it does not, but has skipped all the in-
tervening ages, or it would hardly be named as a
characteristic type of the formation in which it
occurs.

But this disadvantage, serious though it be, is

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

152 The Fundamentals of Geology

scarcely worth speaking of when we remember that
^^some geologists make it a point to give a new
name to all forms found in the Palaeozoic rocks";
or as Heilprin says, ''It is by no means improbable
that many of the older genera, now recognized as
distinct by reason of our imperfect knowledge con-
cerning their true relationships, have in reality rep-
resentatives living in the modern seas." (''Geo-
graphical and Geological Distribution," pp. 207, 208.)

Hence I have no reluctance in saying that, in the
present confused state of zoology and palaeontology,
it is utterly impossible for any one to find out the
truth as to how many hundreds of these "genera" of
the Palaeozoic rocks may have survived to the pres-
ent, though having skipped perhaps all the forma-
tions of the intervening millions of years. I doubt
not that the number is enormously large, though as
no one has yet attempted "to spell through the arbi-
trary palaeontological conclusions" scattered through
the literature, we can depend on only a few though
striking examples that lie on the open pages of the
ordinary text-books.

The larger Mammals can of course furnish us no
examples, for the "age" in which they abounded is
quite conveniently modern, and is separated from
the present by no great lapse of time. Of the smaller
Marsupials quite a number of jaw-bones have been
found in the Jurassic and Triassic, one from the
latter being strikingly like the living Myrmecobius of
Australia. They are scarcely more numerous in
the Cretaceous of America, while in the foreign

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Skipping; Fact Number Five 153

rocks of this system Dana says that ' * only one species
had been reported up to 1894." Those strange,
sad-eyed creatures called Lemurs deserve a passing
notice, for though now confined as to their typical
forms to- the island of Madagascar, their fossils seem
as exclusively confined to the temperate regions of
the New and the Old World. Flower and Lydekker
enumerate about fifteen fossil species, and add that
''it is very noteworthy that all these types seem to
have disappeared from both regions with the close

Fig. 22 — Port Jackson Shark (Heterodontua philippi). A, lateral view;
B, mouth and nostrils, d, Clasper. (From a specimen in the Cambridge Uni-
versity Museum, after T. W. Bridge.)

of the upper portion of the Eocene period." (** Mam-
mals," etc., p. 696.)

But this jump from the '^Eocene period" to the
present is as nothing compared with the secular acro-
batics of some of the Fishes and especially of the
Invertebrates. The living Heterodont or Bullhead
Sharks (among which is the Port Jackson Shark,
Fig. 22), of which there are four species found in
the seas between Japan and Australia, seem to dis-
appear with the Cretaceous, skipping the whole Ter-
tiary epoch, as do also a tribe of modern Barnacles

Digitized by VjOOQIC

.Mi

iss

^•S*M

•S S

«■§•!

Digitized by

Google

Skipping; Fact Number Five 155

which, as Darwin says, *^coat the rocks all over the
world in infinite numbers/' The Dipnoans, or Lung-
fishes (having lungs as well as gills, such as the
Ceratodus and Lepidosiren), which are represented
by several living species in Australia and South
Africa, are the remains of a tribe found in whole
shoals in the Carboniferous, Triassic, and Jurassic
^ rocks, but not, so far as I know, in any of the inter-
vening rocks. The living Ceratodus (Fig. 23) was
only discovered in 1870, and was regarded as a
marvel of '* persistence." On a pinch, as when his
native streams dry up, this curious fellow can get
along all right without water, breathing air by his
lungs like a land animal. If in the meantime he was
off on a trip to the moon, he must have ** persisted"
a few million years without either.

But his cousin, the Polypterus of the Upper Nile,

has a still more amazing record, for he has actually

^ skipped all the formations from the Devonian down

to the modern; while the Limuloids, or sea scorpions,

have jumped from the Carboniferous down.

The MoUusks and Brachiopods would afford us
examples too numerous to mention. How is it pos-
sible that these numerous families disappear sud-
denly and completely with the Mesozoic or even the
^* early" Palaeozoic, and are not found in any '^ater"
deposits, though alive now in our modern world?
Parts of Europe and America have, we are told, been
/ down under the sea and up again a dozen times
since then; why then should we not expect to find
abundant remains of these ^ ^ persistent " types in the

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

156

The Fundamentals of Geology

Mesozoic and Tertiaries? Surely these feats of
time-acrobatics show the folly of arranging con-
temporaneous, taxonomic groups in single file and
giving to each a time Value.

The Chalk points a similar lesson. It was not
till the time of the ''Challenger" Expedition that the
modern deposits of Globigerina ooze (Fig. 25), made

MEGAMASTICTORA
Calca^ea Homococla

CaUAREA HCTCROCOeiA

svcettioac
Crantiioae

Pharetrones

OlALVTINAf

Lithoninae
HICROMASTICTORA
Hexactineluoa

Receptaculitioae

Heteractincluda

octactincllida

TETRACTINELLIOA

Choristida

LiTHlSTIDA

Monaxonioa
Ceratosa

1 E

n X

Z 9

> i

e: ^

8 8 8 8

Fig. 24 — Table to indicate distribution of Sponges in time. (After I. B. J.
Sollas.) This is a photographic reproduction of the diagram given by this
author in "The Cambridge Natural History." Unlike most diagrams of this
kind, this sketch honestly shows in just what formations Sponges are found,
as well as those that they skip. Comment is unnecessary.

up of hundreds of species identical with those of the
Chalk, were known to be now forming over vast
areas of the ocean floor. In the words of Huxley,
these modern species '^bridge over the interval be-

Digitized by

Ljoogle

Skipping; Fact Number Five 157

tween the present and the Mesozoic periods/' (^^Dis-
courses Biological and Geological," p. 347.)

As for the silicious Sponges found in the Chalk
(see Fig. 24), which were such puzzles for the sci-
entists during the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, because their living forms were unknown, the
deep sea investigations have solved the problem, for
in 1877 SoUas demonstrated ''the identity of their
structure with that of living Hexactinellids, Lithis-
tids, and Monactinellids. " (Zittel, ''History of Geol-
ogy,'' p. 388.) •

And yet with all the vicissitudes of the conti-
nents during the "millions of years" since the Cre-
taceous age, there is so far as I am aware not a
trace of either the Chalk or the Sponges in any of
the "subsequent" rocks. Pieces of Cretaceous rock
are of course found thus sporadically as boulders,
but there is no natural deposit of this kind. But in
the light of these modern discoveries, why is not
the Chalk of "the white dear cliffs of Dover," full
of modern living species as we now know it to be,
just as "recent" a deposit as the "late" Tertiaries
or the Pleistocene?

Here is a curious list of instances of skipping as
given by Dana:

A few land Snails are found in the Carboniferous, but
no land Snails have been recognized from the Permian,
Triassic, or Jurassic formations. In the Cretaceous they re-
appear, and from that time the series is substantially con-
tinuous. A few Scorpions are found in the Upper Silurian;
none have been recognized from the Devonian; but in the
Carboniferous both Scorpions and Spiders occur. Both these

Digitized by LjOOQIC

158

The Fundamentals of Geology

O.PIanorbulina

ll.Nummulifes

Fig. 25 — Shells of Foraminifera. In 3, 4, and 5, a shows the surface view,
and b a section. 8a is a- diagram of a coiled cell without supplemental skeleton ;
6b of a similar form with supplemental skeleton («. sk) ; and 10 of a form with
overlapping whorls. In 11a half the shell is shown in horizontal section; b
is a vertical section; a, aperture of the shell; 1-15, successive chambers, 1 being
always the oldest or initial chamber. (From Parker and Has well, after other
authors. )

"There is nothing more wonderful in nature than the building up of these
elaborate and symmetrical structures by mere jelly-specks, presenting no traces
whatever of that definite organization which we are accustomed to regard as
necessary to the manifestations of conscious life. . . . The tests (shells) they
construct, when highly magnified, bear comparison with the most skilful masonry
of man." (Oarpenter.)

Digitized by

Google

Skipping; Fact Number Five 159

groups appear to be missing from the Permian and from the
whole series of Mesozoic strata. They reappear in the Ter-
tiary. Amphibians of the order Labyrinthodonts appear in
the Subearboniferous (or, probably, in the Devonian), and
continue through the Triassie, possibly into the beginning of
the Jurassic. The class of Amphibians then remains unrepre-
sented until a Salamander appears in the Lower Cretaceous.
—''Revised Text-Book/' p. 459.

Any comment on this would be quite superfluous.

Another good illustration of the absurdity of the
usual arrangement of the rocks is found in the
Echinoderms — Crinoids, Starfishes, Sea-urchins, etc.
Of the latter. Prof. A. Agassiz found in the deep
waters of the West Indies four genera of Echinids
or Sea-urchins of the ** later Tertiary," but twenty-
four genera ^of the ^' early Tertiary," ten of the
Cretaceous, and five of the Jurassic. (Dana, *' Man-
ual," p. 59.)

But far from being uncommon, we know that simi-
lar discoveries have been in almost constant progress
during the last half -century. And were it not that
'* zoological students are," as Zittel says, 'Hoo act-
ively engaged and keenly interested in building up
new observations to attempt to spell through the
arbitrary palaBontological conclusions" found in the
^*dead weight of stratigraphical-palaeontological lit-
erature, ' ' there is no telling what hosts of similar
facts might be pointed to regarding the forms found
in all the ^* older" rocks.

Of the Starfishes and Serpent-stars {Asteridea
and Ophiuridea), Zittel says: '^It would seem that
the Palaeozoic ^sea-stars' differed very little from

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Flo 36 — A MODERN CRINOTI

of
(From Wyville Thomson.)

ArmB and portion of stem of Pentacrinua maclearanits, slightly enlarged.
Th<

Digitized by

Google

Skipping; Fact Number Five 161

those in the seas of the present age." (P. 395.)
The Crinoids (see Fig. 26), we are told, *'are among
the earliest in geological history," making up vast
limestones of the Palaeozoic rocks; and forms
scarcely separable from the modern are found in
the Jurassic, but so far as the text-books tell us, are
absolutely unknown in any later deposits. But there
are several modern genera, such as Pentacrinus, Ehi-
zocrinus, Bathycrinus, etc., found in the deep waters
of nearly all the oceans. The genus Ehizocrinus was
discovered off the coast of Norway about the sixties
of the last century. But what were these creatures
doing since ^'Jurassic times," while the *^ pulsating
crust" was putting parts of the continents under the
sea for ages at a stretch? Why did they form no
deposits during the Cretaceous, Eocene, Miocene, or
Pliocene ages? Surely the absurdity of the present
arrangement is evident to a child. During all these
intervening ages the climate of the globe continued
of the same remarkable mildness, fossils of all these
formations being found about as far north as ex-
plorers have ever gone. Why did the Crinoids and
Corals suspend business from ^^ Jurassic times" to
the ^^ recent," merely to accommodate a modern
theory? Dana says that **the coral reefs of the
Oolite in England consist of Corals of the same
group with the reef-making species of the existing
tropics" C Manual," p. 793), and he argues from
this fact that the mean temperature of the waters
must have been about 69* P. But a luxuriant vege-
tation still continued in the Arctic regions during the

11 — Geology

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

162

The Fundamentals of Geology

Cretaceous and the Tertiaries. How absurd to say
that these Corals built no reefs about the European
coasts during all these ages! Or, to put the matter
in another way, considering how many of their char-
acteristic types are alive in our modern seas, why
should we say that the crinoidal or coral limestones

of the Mesozoic or
Palaeozoic rocks are
not as recent as the
nummulitic limestones
of the Eocene or
any late Tertiary de-
posits?

But let us try the
Tree-ferns and Cycads
of the coal-beds of the
''older" rocks. In
northern regions they
are not found ''later"
than the Triassic and
Jurassic ; and doubt-
less the same holds
good of the rocks in
the tropics, where the
modern species now live in fair abundance. But how
did they come to shift to the tropics so many millions
of years before the Palms, etc., of the Tertiaries
thought it time to do the same? The climate had
not changed a bit; how did they come to scent the
coming "Glacial age" so much earlier than their more
highly organized fellows?

Fig. 27 — Pleurotomaria adansoniana Or.
and F., Tobago, x 1-3. This genus of Mol-
lusks seems to have skipped from the Ju-
rassic down. It was long supposed to be
extinct. More than 1,100 fossil species have
been described; but within the last genera-
tion some twenty specimens, belonging to five
species, have been discovered at great depths
off Japan and the West Indies.

Digitized by

Google

Skipping; Fact Number Five 163

The ''Challenger" expedition found some Cya-
thophylloid Corals now building reefs at the bottom
of our modern ocean. The geologists had already
assigned the last of them to the Carboniferous and
Permian rocks with the idea that they were extinct.
But where have these fellows kept themselves dur-
ing all the intervening ages while the continents were
deep under the ocean time and time again? or why
are not the rocks containing their fossils as ''recent"
as any deposits on the globe?

And so I might go on. There is hardly a tribe
found in the "older" rocks which does not have its
living representatives of to-day, and with, I believe,
a fair proportion of the species identical; though in
hundreds, perhaps thousands of cases these species,
genera, or even whole tribes, have somehow skipped
all the intervening formations.

These things help to show that the geological
classifications do not really represent successive ages,
but are merely taxonomic classifications. These ab-
surdities about skipping have come about because
the whole fossiliferous series was all laid off from
the bottom to the top many years before it was
acknowledged that any really "modern" forms are
to be found in the rocks. But such absurdities can
only increase with further discoveries, and will only
cease when we discard all time values as attaching
to particular types of life, and, beginning with the
present, work back into the past to find where and
how the fossils of all our modern species occur. In
this way only can the science be reformed and the
present absurdities eliminated.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

164 The Fundamentals of Geology

But let us drop this method of studying our sub-
ject, and look at it from a slightly different point
of view.

Thus Dana says that **the absence of Lamelli-
branchs in the Middle Cambrian, although present
in both Lower and Upper, means the absence of
fossils .front the rocks, not of species from the
faunas/' (^'Manual," p. 488.)

He puts this in italics, as I have done; for it is
certainly a reasonable idea, and as A. E. Wallace
says, '*No one noiv doubts that where any type ap-
pears in two remote periods it must have been in
existence during the whole intervening period, al-
though we may have no record of it." (** Distribu-
tion of Life," p. 33.) But what would be the result
if we should extend this idea to its logical conclusion 1
It seems to be an effort to avoid one of the ab-
surdities of the onion-coat theory, without, however,
discarding that theory altogether.

In speaking of some Corals and Crinoids of the
Devonian which *^were absent" from some of the
divisions of this formation because the conditions
of the seas about New York **were unfavorable,"
Dana says that ''thej were back when the seas were
again of sufficient purity." (** Manual," p. 611.)

In his review of these formations he enlarges on
this subject:

At the close of the early Devonian the evidences of clear
seas — the Corals and Crinoids, with most of the attendant
life — disappear, migrating no one knows whither. . . .
With the variations in the fineness, or other characteristics
of the beds, as H. S. Williams has illustrated, the species vary.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Skipping; Fact Number Five 165

. , . The faunas of bach stratum are not strictly faunas

OF EPOCHS or periods OF TIME, BUT LOCAL TOPOGRAPHICAL

FAUNAS. After the Corniferous period, Corals, Crinoids,
and Trilobites still flourished somewhere, as before, but they
are absent from the Central Interior until the Carboniferous
age opens. — '^Manual,'' pp. 628, 629.

Here we are certainly getting a refreshing breath
of common-sense geology; but what would become of
current theories if we should enlarge on this idea?

What if the gigantic Dinosaurs of the Cretaceous
or the equally marvelous Mammals of the *' early"
Tertiaries of the Western States, described by Marsh
and Cope, and the Pleistocene Mammals of other
parts of America and of Europe and Northern Si-
beria, ''are not strictly faunas of epochs or periods
of time, but local topographical faunas"? What if
the world-wide limestones of the Cambrian and
Silurian, and the no less enormous or wide-spread
nummulitic limestones of the Eocene, extending from
the Alps to Eastern Asia, and constituting mountains
ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand feet high — what if
^ these are possibly contemporaneous with one another?
Supposing the Coal-measures of Nova Scotia and
Pennsylvania, and the Cretaceous and Tertiary lig-
nites of Vancouver Island, Alberta, and the Western
States, are not strictly floras of epochs or periods
of time, but local topographical floras, and contem-
porary with each other?"

• This is only carrying the argument a little further than Huxley
does when he says that ^'a Devonian fauna and flora in the British
Islands may have been contemporaneous with Silurian life in North
America, and with a Carboniferous fauna and flora in Africa. Geo-
graphical provinces and zones may have been as distinctly marked in
the Palseozoie epoch as at present." (** Discourses, " p. 286.)

Digitized by VjOOQIC

166 The Fundamentals of Geology

In short, what possible means have we of proving
of any two distinct life assemblages that they could
not have coexisted on the earth in separated locali-
ties? Every candid man capable of appreciating
scientific evidence must acknowledge that there is
no such proof.

From all this it must be evident that the fossil
world is a unit; that the different kinds of life do
not and can not mean successive ages, but that they
are simply contemporary plants and animals all ex-
isting together in an older state of the world as we
know it. The time and manner of the burial of these
life forms is a subject for further study, and will be
considered in subsequent chapters.

Let us sum up the net results of our studies.
Eocks are called Devonian, Triassic, Eocene, or what-
ever, because of the fossils they happen to contain.
When a new group of strata is found, its position in
the series is determined by comparing its fossils with
those of the formations already established, no mat-
ter what its stratigraphical relationship may be to
the rocks above it or below. Hence these geological
distinctions or classifications are purely artificial or
conventional in character, and merely represent old
taxonomic relationships, nothing more. In the face
of the history of the idea, and of the purely hap-
hazard way in which the various life groups are now
found to occur, as well as of the artificial and con-
ventional way in which the members of these forma-
tions have been pieced together from scattered lo-
calities, all claim about the results of these labors

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Skipping; Fact Number Five 167

really representing a natural time value appears so
nonconsequential and fallacious to the student of
other branches of science that it must soon make
geology a laughing-stock, unless we speedily discard
these traditional time values, and reconstruct our
fundamental theories on a sure inductive basis in
accordance with the sum total of modern discoveries.
The recognized classifications will remain, though
stripped of their time values; and our science, instead
of being deduced from postulated past conditions
regarding an imaginary beginning of things, will
content itself with starting with the present and
the sum total of modern ascertained facts, and in
their light reconstructing whatever is possible of
past conditions by sound inductive methods.

By these methods of strict inductive science we
shall not be able to avoid the conclusion that our
world has witnessed an awful aqueous catastrophe,
and that back of this lies a direct and real Creation
as the only possible origin of things. In short, a
strictly inductive and mature study of the facts of
geology as known to modern science confirms in a
very marvelous way the literal interpretation of the
first chapters of Genesis, which a pseudo-criticism
and the infant lispings of science supposed they
had consigned to the realm of fable and myth.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Digitized by

Google

i ■

PART TWO

ADDITIONAL FACTS FOR THE BASIS
OF A TRUE INDUCTION

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

CHAPTER IX

Graveyards

**The crust of our globe," writes a distinguished
scientist, ^4s a great cemetery, where the rocks are
tombstones on which the buried dead have written
their own epitaphs." The reading of these epitaphs
is the business of geology; and too often, as we shall
see, the record is that of a violent and sudden death.

With the doctrine of uniformity as a theoretical
proposition, I shall have little to say. At best it
is a pure assumption that the present quiet and
regular action of the elements has always prevailed
in the past, or that this supposition is sufficient to
explain the facts of the rocks. In its more extreme
form it becomes an iron dogma, which shuts out all
evidence not agreeable to its teachings. But in its
essential nature, whether in its least or its most
extreme form, it is not approaching the subject from
the right standpoint. It is not following the method
of scientific research, but the method of lazy, scho-
lastic guesswork.

It seeks to show how the past geological changes
may have occurred; it never attempts to prove how
they must have occurred. And I may say in passing,
that it is largely for the purpose of avoiding the
cumulative character of the evidence gathered from

171

Digitized by VjOOQIC

172 The Fundamentals of Geology

every stone-quarry and from every section of strata
in every comer of the globe, that the uniformitarians
have wished to have these burials take place on the
instalment plan; for otherwise the violent and catas-
trophic character of the events recorded in the rocks
would become too plainly manifest. But, begging
the reader's pardon for repeating here an illustration
already used in a previous chapter, if a coroner,

\ called upon to hold an inquest, were to content him-
self, after the manner of Lyell and Hutton, with glit-
tering generalities about how people are all the time
dying of old age, fever, or other causes, coupled with
assurances of the quiet, regular habits and good
reputation of all his fellow citizens, I do not think
that he would be praised for his adherence to in-
ductive methods if we could get at clear and decisive

N evidence that the poor fellow imder examination had
been shot. Just so with common-sense methods in
geology. A true induction is capable of finding out
for certain whether or not the present quiet, regu-
lar action of the elements has always prevailed in
the past; and it is most unscientific to assume, as the
followers of Hutton and Lyell have done, that the
comparatively insignificant changes within historic
time have always prevailed in the past, when there
is plenty of clear and decisive evidence to the con-
trary.

Prof. AUeyne Nicholson, it is true, thinks that
the geological phenomena are only ^'a question of
energy versus time." ''We may," he says, ''on the
one hand suppose them to be the result of some very

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Graveyards 173

powerful cause, acting through a short period of time.
Or we may suppose them to be caused by a much
weaker force acting through a proportionately pro-
longed period.''

This might be so if we had only to consider
mere quantity of deposition or erosion. But when we
consider the quality or kind of work the case is very
different. A Hercules by ageg" of toil might pile up
stone and brick to the region of the clouds; but no
mere quantity of his clumsy work could create the
Pyramid of Cheops or the Hall of Karnak. An eter-
nity of hacking at stone with a hammer might be
supposed capable of leveling the Alps or the Hima-
layas; but it could never produce a Venus de Milo
or a Parthenon. And it seems to me that we must
shut our eyes to all the evidence if we are still to
maintain that untold ages of quiet deposition like
that within our historic experience would ever pro-
duce the quality of work which is opened up to our
wondering eyes in almost every quarter of the globe.

The general fact which I wish to develop in this
chapter may be stated as follows:

Rocks belonging to all the various systems or
formations give us fossils in such a state of preser-
vation, and heaped together in such astonishing num-
bers, that we can not resist the conviction that the
majority of these deposits were formed in some sud-
den and not modern manner, catastrophic in nature.

But before giving any examples of these abnormal
deposits, we must first study the modern normal

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

174 The Fundamentals of Geology

deposits; before we can rightly understand the
sharp contrast between the ancient and the modern
action of the elements, we must become familiar
with the way in which fossils are now being buried
by our rivers and oceans.

One of the many geological myths dissipated by
\ the work of the * ^ Challenger " expedition, which, as
Zittel says, ^* marks the grandest scientific event of
the nineteenth century,'' is that about the ocean
bottom and the work now being carried on there.
The older text-books taught that not only was the
bottom of the ocean thickly strewn with the remains
of the animals which died there and in the waters
above, but also that the oceanic currents were con-

• stantly wearing away in some places and building
up in others over all the ocean floor, and hence pro-

^ ducing true stratified deposits. Accordingly it was
said that it was only necessary for these beds to be
lifted above the surface to produce the ordinary rocks
that we find everywhere about us. But we now know
that the ocean currents have, as Dana says, ''no
\^ sensible, mechanical effects, either in the way of

^ transportation or abrasion.'' (^* Manual," p. 229.)
We know also that all kinds of sediment drop so
much quicker in salt water than in fresh, that none
of it gets beyond the narrow * ^ continental shelf" and
the classic 100 fathom line, which in most cases is
not very far from shore. In the north Atlantic there
are sediments found in deeper water produced by
ice-floes or icebergs dropping their loads there; but

. we can not suppose such work to have gone on

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Graveyards 175

when the Arctic regions were clothed with a tem-
perate-climate vegetation, much less that such things
occurred over all the earth. On the floor of the
open ocean, and away from the tracks of our modern
icebergs, we have four or five kinds of mud or ooze
formed from minute particles of organic matter; but
besides these, absolutely nothing save a possible
sprinkling of volcanic products, which of course are
limited in their distribution. Where then can we
find a stratified or bedded structure now being
formed over the ocean bottom? Sir John Murray,
in his *^ Report on Deep Sea Deposits," has shown
in ^*a most thorough and convincing manner," to
quote the strong words of Professor Suess, that there
is nothing of the kind now being produced there.
There is no gravel, no sand, no ordinary clay; but
whatever variation we may imagine to take place in
the organic deposits could never produce a real
stratified or bedded structure.

The so-called Red Clay deposits of the deep ocean
cover about. 36 per cent of the oceanic area, or
about 50,000,000 square miles, the Globigerina ooze
making up over 29 per cent, or 40,000,000 square
miles. Both of these deposits, covering as they do
the greater part of the whole ocean bottom, are so
entirely different from anything found in the fossil-
iferous rocks that most geologists admit the total
dissimilarity. Of course the species of the Globi-
gerina and other oozes are like those found fossil
in the Cretaceous rocks, but the mechanical structure
of the two is entirely different; while in the case

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

176 The Fundamentals of Geology

of the Bed Clay, which can hardly be said to con-
tain animal remains, it is admitted that there is noth-
ing like it through the whole range of the fossilifer-
ous rocks from the Cambrian to the Pleistocene.

Thus to explain practically all the deposits found
in the rocks, we are absolutely limited to the shore
deposits and the mouths of large riveue. Here we
>. certainly have alternations of sand, clay, and gravel,
producing a true bedded structure. But I ask. What
kind of organic remains will we get from these mod-
ern deposits? Certainly nothing like the crowded
graveyards which we find everywhere in the ancient
ones.

Darwin, in his famous chapter on '^The Imper-
fection of the Geological Record," has well shown
how scanty and imperfect are the modern fossilifer-
ous deposits. The progress of research has only .
confirmed and accentuated the argument there pre-
sented on this point. Thus Nordenskiold, the veteran
Arctic explorer, remarks with amazement on the scar-
city of recent organic remains in the Arctic regions,
where such a profusion of animal life exists ; while
in spite of the great numbers of Cats, Dogs, and
other domestic animals which are constantly being
thrown into rivers like the Hudson or the Thames,
dredgings about the mouths of these streams have
\ revealed the surprising fact that scarcely a trace of
any such animals is there to be found. {Popular
Science Monthly, Vol. 21, pp. 143, 693.)

Even the Fishes themselves stand a very poor
chance of being buried intact. As Dana puts it:

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Graveyards 177

Vertebrate animals,- as Fishes, Eeptiles, etc., which fall to
pieces when the animal portion is removed, require speedy
burial after death, to escape destruction from this source
[decomposition and chemical solution from air, rain-water,
etc.], as well as from animals that would prey upon them. —
''Manual/' p. 141.

If a vertebrate Fish should die a natural death,
which of itself must be a rare occurrence, the carcass
would soon be devoured whole or bit by bit by other

^creatures near. Possibly the lower jaw, or the
teeth, spines, etc., in the case of Sharks, or a bone
or two of the skeleton, might be buried unbroken,
but a whole vertebrate Fish entombed in a modern
deposit is surely a unique occurrence.

But every geologist knows that the remains of
Fishes are, in countless millions of cases, found in
a marvelous state of preservation. They have been

^ entombed in whole shoals, with the beds containing
them miles in extent, and scattered over all the globe.
Indeed, so accustomed have we grown to this state
of affairs in the rocks we hammer up, that if we fail
to find such well-preserved remains of vertebrate
Fishes, land animals, or plants, we feel disappointed,
almost hurt; we think that nature has somehow
slighted this particular set of beds. But where in
our modern quiet earth will we go to find deposits
now forming like the copper slate of the Mansfield
district, the Jurassic shales of Solenhof en, the cal-
careous marls of (Eningen on Lake Constance, the'
black slates of Glarus, or the shales of Monte Bolca?
— to mention some cases from the continent of
Europe more than usually famous in the literature

12 — Geplogy

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

178 The Fundamentals of Geology

for exquisitely preserved vertebrate Fishes, to say
nothing of other fossils. According to Dana, all these
must have met with a ^* speedy burial after death''
— perhaps before; who knows?

Buckland, in speaking of the fossil Fish of Monte
Bolca, which may be taken as typical of all the others,
is quite positive that these Fish must have *^ perished
suddenly,'' by some tremendous catastrophe.

^^The skeletons of these Fish," he says, *4ie par-
allel to the laminae of the strata of the calcareous
slate; they are always entire, and so closely packed
on one another that many individuals are often con-
tained in a single block. . . . All these Fish must
have died suddenly on this fatal spot, and have been
speedily buried in the calcareous sediment then in
course of deposition. From the fact that certain
individuals have even preserved traces of color upon
their skin, we are certain that they were entombed
before decomposition of their soft parts had taken
place." (^'Geol. and Min.," Vol. 1, pp. 124, 125, ed.
1858.)

In many places in America as well as Europe,
where these remains of Fish are found, the shaley
rock is so full, of fish-oil that it will burn almost like
coal, while some have even thought that the pecul-
iar deposits like Albertite ^^coal" and some cannel-
coals were formed from the distillation of the fish-oil
•from the supersaturated rocks.

De la Beche was also of the opinion that most- of
the fossils were buried suddenly and in an abnormal
manner. *^A very large proportion of them," he

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Graveyards 179

says, **must have been entombed uninjured, and many
alive, or, if not alive, at least before decomposition
ensued." (^^Theoretical Geology,'' p. 265, London,
1834.) In this he is speaking not of the Fishes alone
but of the fossiliferous deposits in general.

There is a series of strata found in all parts of
the world which used to be called the ^^Old Eed
Sandstone," now known as the Devonian. In this,
almost wherever we find it, the remains of whole
shoals of Fishes occur in such profusion and preser-
vation that the *^ period" is often known as the ''Age
of Fishes." Dr. David Page, after enumerating
nearly a dozen genera, says:

These Fishes seem to have thronged the waters of the
period, and their remains are often found in masses, as if
they had been suddenly entombed in living shoals by the
sediment which now contains them.

I beg leave to quote somewhat at length the pic-
turesque language of Hugh Miller regarding these
rocks as found in Scotland:

The river Bullhead, when attacked by an enemy, or im-
mediately as it feels the hook in its jaws, erects its two spines
at nearly right angles with the plates of the head, as if to
render itself as difficult of being swallowed as possible. The
attitude is one of danger and alarm ; and it is a curious fact,
to which I shall afterward have occasion to advert, that in
\ this attitude nine tenths of the Pterichthes of the Lower
Old Bed Sandstone are to be found, ... It presents us, too,
with a wonderful record of violent death falling at once, not
on a few individuals, but on whole tribes. . . .

At this period of our history, some terrible catastrophe
involved in sudden destruction the Fish of an area at least
a hundred miles from boundary to boundary, perhaps much
more. The same platform in Orkney as at Cromarty is

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

180 The Fundamentals of Geology

strewed thick with remains, which exhibit unequivocally the
miarks of violent death. The figures are contorted, contracted,
curved, the tail in many instances is bent round to the head ;
the spines stick out ; the fins are spread to the full, as in Fish
that die in convulsions. . . . The record is one of destruction
at once widely spread and total, so far as it extended. . . .
By what quiet but potent agency of destruction were the in-
\^ numerable existences of an area perhaps ten thousand square
miles in extent annihilated at once, and yet the medium in
which they had lived left undisturbed in its operations?

Conjecture lacks footing in grappling with the enigma,
and expatiates in uncertainty over all the known phenomena
of death.— ''OW Red Sandstone/' pp. 48, 221, 222.

I will not taunt the uniformitarians by asking
them to direct us to some modern analogies. But I
would have the reader remember that these Dev-
onian and other rocks are world-wide in extent.

Surely Howorth is talking good science when he
says that his masters Sedgwick and Murchison taught
him *Hhat no plainer witness is to be found of any
physical fact than that Nature has at times worked
with enormous energy and rapidity," and ^* that the
rocky strata teem with evidence of violent and sud-
den dislocations on a great scale.*'

I have spoken only of the class Fishes. But
what other class of the animal kingdom will not
point us a similar lesson? The Reptiles and Am-
phibians, to say nothing of thie larger Mammals, are
also found in countless myriads, packed together as
if in natural graveyards. Everybody knows of the
enormous numbers and splendid preservation of the
great Reptiles of the Western and Southern States,
untombed by Leidy, Cope, and Marsh. One patch

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Graveyards 181

of Cretaceous strata in England, the Wealden, has
afforded over thirty different species of Dinosaurs,
Crocodiles, and Plesiosaurs. Mr. Charles H. Stern-
berg, one of ZittePs assistants, recently reported
great quantities of Amphibians from the Permian of
Texas. They are of all sizes, some Frogs being six
^ feet long, others ten. Besides these he found 'Hhree
bone-beds full" of minute forms an inch or less in
length. Of the small ones, which I judge must repre-
sent whole millions of young ones suddenly entombed,
he says:

I got over twenty perfect skulls, many with vertebrae
attached, and thousands of small bones from all parts of
the skeleton. In one case, a complete skull, one fourth of an
inch in length, had connected with it nearly the entire verte-
bral column, with ribs in position, coiled upon itself, bedded
with many bones of other species in a red silicious matrix.
So perfectly were they weathered out that they lay in bas-
relief as white and perfect as if they had died a month ago j
a single row of teeth, like the points of cambric needles, occu-
pied both sets of jaws. — '^Popular Science News,'' May, 1902,
pp. 106, 107,

How many more such cases there may have been
in these ^^ three bone-beds fulP' of similar remains,
it would be interesting to know. But though some-
what aside from the present subject, I can not re-
frain, in passing, from referring to the wonderful
preservation of these remains. It is preposterous
to say that these bones have lain thus exposed to
^ the weather for the length of time postulated by
the popular theory. There is not a particle of sci-
entific evidence to prove that they are not just as
recent as any specimen from the Tertiaries or the

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

182 The Fundamentals of Geology

Pleistocene. Buffon and Cuvier proved the Mammals
to be of ** recent" age, because they occurred in the
superficial deposits. They never heard of the Tri-
assic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous of Colorado and
Wyoming, nor these Permian beds of Texas. Think
of this frog's teeth ^4ike the points of cambric
needles," and he and his fellow as ** perfect as if
they had died a month ago." Of one of the big six-
foot specimens this author says, ''Its head was so
beautifully preserved, and cleaned under long erosion,
it was difficult to believe it was not a recent speci-
men;'' while of the little six-inch fellow referred to
above he says, ^*The bones of the skull are per-
fectly preserved, quite smooth, and show the sutures
distinctly; there is no distortion; some red matrix at-
tached below seems absolutely necessary to convince
the mind that it is not a thing of yesterday." James
Geikie mentions the case^ of the Elgin sandstones
* ^formerly classed as ^Old Red,' " but which are now
called Triassic, *^from the fact that they have yielded
reptilian remains of a higher grade than one would
expect to meet with in Old Red Sandstone." (^^His-
torical Geology," p. 53.) Since these strata slide
up and down so easily, we have here far more urgent
scientific reasons for calling these Amphibian remains
of Texas among the most ^* recent" geological deposits
on the globe.

But I must return to my subject. The Inverte-
brates are also eloquent to the fact of abnormal con-
ditions having prevailed when their remains were
entombed. We could go through the whole list, but

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Graveyards 183

it is the same old story of abnormal deposits, essen-
tially different from anything that is being made
to-day.

Where, for instance, in the modern seas, will we
find Corals now being intercalated between beds of
clays or sands over vast areas, as we find them in
the Lias and Oolite of England and elsewhere!
Corals require a definite depth of water, neither too
deep nor too shallow, but it must be clear and pure;
and nothing but some awful catastrophe could place
a bed of Coral remains a few feet or a few inches in
thickness over the vast areas where we find them.
Crinoids require the same clear, pure water, but
much deeper, some of the modern kinds living over
a mile down, where there is no sand, no clay, abso-
lutely nothing to disturb the eternal calm. But every
student of the science knows that the Subcarbonifer-
ous limestone of both Europe and America (called
mountain limestone in England), so noted for its
Crinoids and its Corals, is constantly found inter-
calated between shale or sandstone, or betwjeen the
coal-beds themselves, as at Springfield, Illinois, or in
the Lower Coal-measures of Westjnoreland County,
Pennsylvania. There are of course, here and there,
great masses of these rocks which represent an
original formation by growth in situ; but no sane
man can say this for these great sheets perhaps only
a few inches in thickness, for in many cases they
show a stratified or bedded structure just as much
as a sandstone or a shale. In some tables given by
Dana on pages 651, 652, of his *^ Manual,-" compiled

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

184 The Fv/ndamentals of Geology

from four different localities, I count no less than
twenty-three beds of limestone thus intercalated be-
tween coal-beds, though we are not told how many
of them contain Corals or Crinoids. Such details
are generally omitted as of little consequence.

Next, let us try the LamellibrSnchs, such as the
Clam, Oyster, and other true bivalves. These crea-
tures have an arrangement in the hinge region by
which the valves of the shell tend to open, but during
life are held together by the adductor muscles. When
dead, however, these pauscles relax and
decay, and then the valves spread open.
Forms which burrow deeply, as Solen,
Lutraria, My a, etc., often gape widely,
and even if they died a natural death in
their holes, some mud must inevitably
wash into their burrows, filling their
choneua^^jf^ u eTi. empty shcUs. But many kinds of

(Cornbrash.) d, ,. / , , ^, , "^ . ^,

Deitidium; /, fora- bivalves do uot thus burrow m the

men.

ground; and when the fossils of such
kinds are found in quantity with the valves applied and
often hollow, as is so frequently the case in many of
the ^^ older" rocks, I can not see how we are to under-
stand any ordinary conditions of deposit. And yet
we are gravely assured by a high authority, that ''a
sudden burial is not necessary to entombment in this
condition. ' '

Or let us take the Brachiopods. These have a
bivalve shell, the parts of which, however, are not
pulled apart after death, and only need to open a
little way even in life to admit the sea water which

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Graveyards 185

brings them their food. Yet, though the valves do
not gape after death, there is when dead and empty
a hole at the hinge or beak (see Figs. 28, 29), which
would readily admit mud if such were present in the
water, or if the shells after death were subject to the
ordinary movements of tide, wave, and current. Yet
Dawson says of the Brachiopods Spirifer and
Athyris:

I may mention here that in all the Carboniferous lime-
stones of Nova Scotia the shells of this family are usually
found with the valves closed and the
interior often hollow. — ^'Acadian Ge-
ology/' p. 260. •

Of course he tries to explain
how this state of things might oc-
cur *^in deep and clear water" —
for some of the modern species are fig. 2d^^erebratuia
found in the clear depths 18,000 sand.) d? o'litidiiS'r a

1-1 1 foramen.

feet down — and he thmks that
their entombment in this condition ''does not prove
that the death of the animals was sudden." This
was written in the old days when people knew noth-
ing of conditions on the ocean bottom. But we now
know that there is no means of producing a strati-
fied formation in this ''deep and clear water," and
hence that some revolution of nature is implied by
the conditions in which we find them.

Some people seem to have converted Pavid
Hume's famous sentence into a scientific formula,
thus: "Anything contrary to uniformity is impos-

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

186 The Fundamentals of Geology

sible; hence no amount of evidence can prove any-
thing contrary to uniformity."

For the trouble in this case is that not only do
such conditions prevail ''m all the Carboniferous
limestones of Nova Scotia,'' which must be several
thousands of square miles in extent, but in the Dev-
onian shales and Silurian limestones throughout
North America at least — doubtless over the rest
of the world — the Brachiopods are found in this
. same telltale condition, and it would establish a very
dangerous precedent to admit abnormal conditions
in even a single case.

I have only touched upon the voluminous evidence
that might be adduced in the case of the lower forms
of life. Had I the space, I might show how the
marvelously preserved plants of the coal-beds tell the
same story. But we must pass on to consider the
remains of the larger land animals. I have already
given a quotation from Dana about the Mammoth
and Ehinoceros in Northern Siberia, where he says
that their encasing in ice and the perfect preserva-
tion of their flesh ^* shows that the cold finally be-
came suddenly extreme, as of a single winter's night,
and knew no relenting afterward." Not very many
serious attempts have been made to account for this
remarkable state of things, which is a protest against
uniformity that can be appreciated by a child, and
I never heard of any theory which attempted to
account for the facts without some kind of awful
catastrophe.

Many, however, seem to have little idea of the

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Graveyards 187

extent of these remains in the Arctic regions. They
are not all thus perfectly preserved, for thousands
of skeletons are found in localities where the ground
partially thaws out in the short summer, and here
of course the skin and tissues could not remain intact.
Remains of these beasts occur in only a little less
abundance over all Western Europe, and the Mam-
moth also in North America, well preserved speci-
mens having been obtained from the Klondike region
of Alaska; and there is nothing to forbid the idea
that many if not most of these latter specimens were
also at one time enshrined as ** mummies" in the ice
and frozen soil which has since thawed out over the
more temperate regions. But we must confine our-
selves to the remains in Siberia. Flower and Ly-
dekker tell us that since the tenth century at least,
"^ ^ these remains have been quarried for the sake of the
ivory tusks, and a regular trade in this fossil ivory,
in a state fit for commercial purposes, has been car-
ried on **both eastward to China, and westward to
Europe,'' and that * 'fossil ivory has its price cur-
rent as well as wheat."

They are found at all suitable places along the whole line
of the shore between the mouth of the Obi and Bering
Straits, and the further north the more numerous do they
become, the islands of New Siberia being now one of the
favorite collecting localities. The soil of Bear Island and of
Liachoff Islands is said to consist only of sand and ice with
\ such quantities of Mammoth bones as almost to compose
its chief substance. The remains are not only found around
the mouths of the great rivers, as would be the case if the
carcasses had been washed down from more southern localities
in the interior of the continent, but are imbedded in the

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

188 The Fundamentals of Geology

frozen soil in such circumstances as to indicate that the
animals had lived not far from the localities in which they
are now found, and they are exposed either by the melting of
the ice in unusually warm summers, or by the washing away
of the sea cliffs or river banks by storms or floods. In this
way the bodies of more or less nearly perfect animals, even
standing in the erect position, with the soft parts and hairy
covering entire, have been brought to light. — ^^ Mammals/'
p. 430.

But these remains of the Mammoth, though the
best known, are not the only ones attesting ex-
traordinary conditions, though of course in warmer
latitudes we do not find perfect ''mummies" with
the hide and flesh preserved untainted. Let us go
to a warmer climate, to Sicily, and read a descrip-
tion of the remains of the Hippopotamus found
there. I quote from Sir Joseph Prestwich:

The chief localities, which center on the hills around Pa-
lermo, arrest attention from the extraordinary quantity of
bones of Hippopotami (in complete hecatombs) which have
there been found. Twenty tons of these bones were shipped
from around the one cave of San Giro, near Palermo, within
the first six months of exploiting them, and they were so fresh
that they were sent to Marseilles to furnish animal charcoal
for use in the sugar factories. How could this bone breccia
have been accumulated? . . . The only suggestion that has
been made is that the bones are those of successive generations
of Hippopotami which went there to die. But this is not
the habit of the animal, and besides, the bones are those of
animals of all ages down to fhe foetus, nor do they show
traces of weathering or exposure. . . .

My supposition is, therefore, that when the island was
submerged, the animals in the plain of Palermo naturally
retreated, as the waters advanced, deeper into the amphi-
theater of hills until they found themselves embayed, as in
a seine, with promontories running out to sea on either side
and a mural precipice in front. As the area became more

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Graveyards 189

and more circumscribed the animals must have thronged to-
gether in vast multitudes, crushing into the more accessible
caves, and swarming over the ground at their entrance, until
^ overtaken by the waters and destroyed. — ^'On Certain Phe-
nomena,'' etc, pp, 50-52.

Our author then adds this summary of his
argument :

The extremely fresh condition of the bones, proved by
the retention of so large a proportion of animal matter, and
the fact that animals of all ages were involved in the catas-
trophe, shows that the event was geologically, comparatively
recent, as other facts show it to have been sudden.

That it must have been a good deal more ^^ sud-
den" than even this author will admit, is evident
from the nature of the Hippopotamus. I never
thought that it was particularly afraid of the water,
or likely to be drowned by any such moderate catas-
trophe as Prestwich invokes in this very singular
volume. The reader must, however, note that this
affair, like the entombment of the Mammoth, cer-
tainly took place since Man was upon the globe, even
according to the uniformitarians. Would it not be
economy of energy to correlate the two? But if
Man dates from '^Miocene times," as some contend,
he must have witnessed half a dozen awful affairs
like these, according to the common view, for there
is scarcely a country on the globe that has not been
under the ocean since then.

Let us proceed.

But whither shall we turn to avoid finding similar
phenomena? The vast deposits of Mammals in the
Rocky Mountains may occur to the reader. As Dana

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

190 The Fundamentals of Geology

says, they '*have been found to be literally Tertiary
burial-grounds." I need not go into the details of
these deposits, nor of those in other places con-
taining the great Mammals which must have been
contemporary with ** Tertiary Man,'' for I should
only weary the reader with a monotony of abnormal
conditions of deposit — unlike anything now being
produced this wide world over. We shall be stating
the case very mildly indeed, if we conclude that the
vast majority of the fossils, by their profuse abun-
dance and their astonishing preservation, tell a very
plain «tory of ^^ speedy burial after death," and are
of an essentially different character from modern
deposits.

Professor Nicholson, in speaking of the remains
of the Zeuglodon, says:

Kemains of these gigantic Whales are very common in
the '* Jackson beds'' of the Southern United States. So com-
mon are they that, according to Dana, **the large vertebrae,
some of them a foot and a half long and a foot in diameter,
were formerly so abundant over the country in Alabama that
they were used for making walls, or were burned to rid the
fields of them,''— *' Ancient Life-History/' p. 300.

Shortly before his death in 1895, Dana prepared

a revised edition of his ** Manual," and in it he gives

us quite a rational explanation of this case, as

follows :

Vertebras were so abundant, on the first discovery, in some
places that many of these Eocene Whales must have been
stranded together in a common catastrophe, on the northern
borders of the Mexican Gulf — possibly by a series of earth-
quake waves of great violence; or by an elevation along the
sea limit that made a confined basin of the border region,
which the hot sun rendered destructive alike to Zeuglodons

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Graveyards 191

and their game; or by an unusual retreat of the tide, which
left them dry and floundering under a tropical sun. — P. 908,

That is, this veteran geologist in his old age
would not attempt to account for such abnormal
conditions without a catastrophe of some kind. But
if we use similar explanations for similar conditions,
where shall we stop through the whole range of the
rocks from the Cambrian to the Pleistocene?

Dana became very fond of this idea of earthquake
waves, and invoked them to account for ^Hhe univer-
sality and abruptness" with which the species dis-
appear at the close of ^^ Palaeozoic time," using as
the generating cause the uplifting of the Appalachian
Mountains, with ^ ^flexures miles in height and space,
and slips along newly opened fractures that kept
up their interrupted progress through thousands of
feet of displacement," from which he says ^in-
calculable violence and great surgings of the ocean
should have occurred and been often repeated. . . .
Under such circumstances the devastation of the sea
border and the low-lying lands of the period, the
destruction of their animals and plants, would, have
been a sure result. The survivors within a long
distance of the coast line would have been few."
(** Manual," p. 736.)

But as this sudden break in the life-chain *^was
so general and extensive that no Carboniferous
species is known to occur among the fossils of suc-
ceeding beds, not only in America and Europe, but
also over the rest of the world" (p. 735), he is
obliged to make his catastrophe by earthquake waves

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

192

The Fundamentals of Geology

positively world-wide. Hence he adds, ''The same
waves would have swept over European land and
seas, and there found coadjutors for new strife in
earthquake waves of European origin."

At the close of the Mesozoic he uses similar lan-
guage, though in this
case he has the whole
range of the moun-
tains on the west of
both North and South
America, the Rockies
and the Andes, in
length a ''third of the
circumference of the
globe, " " undergoing
simultaneous orogenic
movements, with like
grand results." (P.
875.) "The deluging
waves sent careering
over the land" would,
he thinks, "have been
destructive over all
the coasts of a hemi-
sphere," and "may have made their marches inland
for hundreds of miles" (p. 878), sweeping all before
them.

I should think so; but then what becomes of this
doctrine of uniformity? Personally, I have not the
slightest objection to these "deluging waves sent
careering over the land," for I feel sure that just

Pig. 80 — sib CHARLES LYELL
(1797-1875)

Digiti

zed by Google

Graveyards

193

such things have occurred, and on just such a s(*ale
as our author pictures, for, as he says, the destruc-
tion of species ^'was great, world-wide, and one of
the most marvelous events in geological history. ' ' '
(P. 877.)

But it seems to me that here we have an enor-
mous amount of energy
going to waste. Others
have demanded a con-
tinent to explain the ap-
pearance of a beetle in
a certain locality; but
here we have a great
world-wide catastrophe
to explain the sud-
den disappearance of
merely a few species.
Why not utilize this
surplus energy in doing
other necessary work,
that has certainly been
accomplished somehow,
but has hitherto gone a begging for a competent
cause? The only thing I object to in Dana's view

Fig. 31 — JAMjLfci HUTTON
(1726-1797)

*Prof. Eduard Suess, with his usual transparent candor, when re-
ferring to the work of Sir John Murray in proving that the deposits
now gathering at the bottom of our modern oceans contain no gravel, or
sand, or clay, or any ** admixture of mineral matter derived from the
surface of the land,'' points out how sharply they contrast with the
old-time geological deposits. And in speaking of the manner in which
some at least of the geological changes must have occurred, he says
that many of them must have been **of such indescribable and over-
powering violence that the imagination refuses to follow the under-
standing and to complete the picture" of how they were really accom-
plished. (''Face of the Earth," Vol. 1, pp. 4, 17, 18.)

13^ — Geology

Digitized by

Google

194 The Fundamentals of Geology

of the case is his way of having these *^ extermina-
tions" take place on the instalment plan. For in
that way we have to work up a great world catas-
trophe to do only a very limited amount of work,
and then have to repeat the thing another time for
\ a similarly limited work, when one such cosmic con-
vulsion is competent to do the whole thing. I plead
for the ''law of parsimony," and the economizing
of energy.

As Sir Isaac Newton expressed it in his Regulce
Philosophandi, ''No more causes are to be admitted
than such as suffice to explain the phenomena;"
and also, "In so far as possible, the same causes
are to be assigned for the same kind of natural
effects. ' '

It will never do to disregard continually these
simple axioms of inductive reasoning, if we expect
our geology to rank with the other sciences founded
on the principles of induction.

The vast shoals of carcasses which seem to be
piled up in almost every corner of the world are
prima facie evidence that our old globe has wit-
nessed some sort of cosmic convulsion. The exact
cause, nature, and extent of this event we may never
have sufficient facts to determine, though two or
three additional facts having a bearing on the sub-
ject will be considered in the following chapters.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

CHAPTER X

Change of Climate

Another great general fact about the fossil world
may be stated about as follows:

All of the fossils (save a very few. of the so-
called '^Glacial age," and they admit of other easy
explanation) give us proofs of an almost eternal
spring having prevailed in the Arctic regions, and
semitropical conditions in north temperate latitudes;
in short give us proofs of a singular uniformity of
climate over the globe which we can hardly con-
ceive possible, let alone account for.

The proofs of this are almost unnecessary, as
this subject of climate has been pretty well dis-
cussed of late years. And it was the overwhelming
evidence qn this point which forced Lyell and so
many others to decide against the theory of CroU,
which called for a regular rotation of climates, for
they said that the fossil evidence was wholly against
such a view. Howorth has given an admirable argu-
ment on this point in chapter 11 of his second work
on the Glacial theory (^*The Glacial Nightmare and
the Flood," pp. 426-479), and to it I would refer
the reader for details which I have not the space
to reproduce here.

195

Digitized by VjOOQIC

196 The Fundamentals of Geology

This author first remarks:

The best thermometer we can use to test the character
of a climate is the flora and fauna which lived while it pre-
vailed. This is not only the best, but is virtually the only
thermometer available when we inquire into the climate of
past geological ages. Other evidence is always sophisticated
by the fact that we may be attributing to climate what is
due to other causes, boulders can be rolled by the sea as well
as by subglacial streams, and conglomerates can be formed
by other agencies than ice. But the biological evidence is
unmistakable ; cold-blooded Reptiles can not live in icy water ;
semitropical plants, or plants whose habitat is in the tem-
perate zone, can not ripen their seeds and sow themselves
under Arctic conditions. . . . We may examine the whole
series of geological horizons, from the earliest Palaeozoic beds
down to the so-called Glacial beds, and find, so far as 1
know, no adequate evidence of discontinuous and alternating
climates, no evidence whatever of the existence of periods
of intense cold intervening between warm periods, but just
the contrary. Not only so, but we shall find that the differ-
V entiation of the earth's climate into tropical and Arctic zones
\ is comparatively moder7i, and that in past ages not only were
the climates more uniform, but more evenly distributed over
the whole world.

Without attempting to follow through the whole
series of formations, we may note a few character-
istic statements of the text-books. Thus Dana says
of the Cambrian:

There was no frigid zone, and there may have been no
, excessively torrid zone.

While of the Silurian coral limestones of the
Arctic regions he says:

The formation of thick strata of limestone shows that life
like that of the lower latitudes not only existed there, but
flourished in profusion. — ^^ Manual/' pp. 484, 524, 525.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Change of Climate 197

Howorth thus quotes Colonel Fielden, the Arctic
explorer, regarding the fossil Sclerodermic Corals
of the Silurian, widely distributed in the Arctic
regions :

These undoubted reef -forming Corals of the Silurian epoch
\^ were just as much inhabitants of warm water in northern
latitudes at that period as are the Sclerodermata of to-day
in the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic oceans. . . . These Corals
were forms of life which must have been tropical in habits
and requirement.

In fact coral limestones of the Carboniferous
system are the nearest known fossiliferous rocks to
the north pole, and from the strike of the beds must
underlie the Polar Sea. In the words of Howorth,
*'Coal strata with similar fossils have occurred all
round the polar basin, . . . and may be said,
therefore, to have occupied a continuous cap around
the north pole." (Op. cit., pp. 434, 435.)

Again I quote from Howorth regarding the Meso-
zoic rocks:

This very wide-spread fauna and flora proves that the
high temperature of the Secondary era prevailed in all lati-
tudes, and not only so, it pervaded them apparently con-
tinuously without a break. There is no evidence whatever,
known to me, that can be derived from the fauna and flora
of Secondary times, which points to any period of cold as
even possible. There are no shrunken and stunted forms,
and no types such as we associate with cold conditions, and
no changes evidenced by intercalated beds showing vicissi-
tudes of life.

The following is from Nordenskiold, as quoted
by Howorth, and refers to the whole geological
series :

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

198 The Fundamentals of Geology

From what has been already stated it appears that the
animal and vegetable relics found in the polar regions, 'im-
bedded in strata deposited in widely separated geological
eras, uniformly testify that a warm climate has in former
times prevailed over the whole globe. From palaeontological
science no support can be obtained for the assumption of a
periodical alternation of warm and cold climates on the sur-
face of the earth. — Id., p. 45.

And now we have the equally positive language
of A. E. Wallace:

It is quite impossible to ignore or evade the force of the
testimony as to the continuous warm climate of the north
temperate and polar zones throughout Tertiary times. The
evidence extends over a vast area both in space and time,
it is derived from the work of the most competent living
geologists, and it is absolutely consistent in its general tend-
ency. . . . Whether in Miocene, Upper or Lower Creta-
ceous, Jurassic, Triassic, Carboniferous, or Silurian times,
and in all the numerous localities extending over more than
half the polar regions, we find one uniform climatic aspect
of the fossils.— ''Island Life/' pp. 182, 195, 196; ''Night-
mare,'' pp. 455, 456.

Of course in all this I am taking the various
kinds of fossils in the traditional chronological order.
But I shall presently show on the best of authority
that Man existed in ^* Pliocene" or perhaps ''Miocene
times," and in view of such an admission w;e have,
even from the standpoint of current theory, a vital,
personal interest in this question of climate. Let us
take, then, the following from James Geikie, the
great champion of the Glacial theory, on the climate
of the Arctic regions at this part of the human epoch:

Miocene deposits occur in Greenland, Iceland, Spitzbergen,
and at other places within the Arctic Circle. The beds con-
tain a similar [similar to the **most luxuriant vegetation

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Change of Climate 199

of Switzerland] assemblage of plant remains; the Palm-
trees, however, being wanting. It is certainly wonderful that
within so recent a period as the Miocene, a climate existed
within the Arctic regions so mild and genial as to nourish
there Beeches, Oaks, Planes, Poplars, Walnuts, Limes, Mag-
nolias, Hazel, Holly, Blackthorn, Logwood, Hawthorn, Ivy,
Vines, and many evergreens, besides numerous Conifers,
among which was the Sequoia, allied to the gigantic Welling-
tonia of California. This ancient vegetation has been traced
"^ up to within eleven degrees of the pole. — ^'Historical Geol-
ogy," p. 76.

According to Dana and other American geologists
the ^^ Glacial period" is only a variation intervening
between the warm Tertiary and the equally warm
**Champlain period," and it was during the latter
that the Mammoth, Mastodon, etc., roamed over Eu-
rope, Asia, and America. Of the climate then in-
dicated, when all acknowledge that Man was in ex-
istence, this author says:

The genial climate that followed the Glacial appears to
have been marvelously genial to the species, and alike for all
the continents, Australia included. The kinds that continued
into modern time became dwindled in the change wherever
found over the globe, notwithstanding the fact that genial
climates are still to be found over large regions. — '^ Manual,''
p. 997,

In his ''Geological Story Briefly Told," he uses
even stronger language:

The brute Mammals reached their maximum in numbers
and size during the warm Champlain period, and many
species lived then which have since become extinct. Those
of Europe and Britain were largely warm-climate species,
such as are now confined to warm temperate and tropical
regions; and only in a warm period like the Champlain
could they have thrived and attained their gigantic size. The

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

200 The Fundamentals of Geology

great abundance of their remains and their condition show
that the climate and food were all the animals could have
desired. They were masters of their wanderings, and had
their choice of the best. — Page 225 y ed. of 1875.

The genial climate of the Champlain period was abruptly
[Italics Dana's] terminated. For carcasses of the Siberian
Elephants were frozen so suddenly and so completely at the
change, that the flesh has remained untainted. — /d, p, 230.

I quite agree with this author that the evidence is
conclusive as to the climate and food being ''all the
animals could have desired,'' and that they must have
''had their choice of the best." But it seems to me
that in following out their theory these authors have
not left the poor creatures very much to choose from.
For as the inevitable result of their theory in ar-
ranging the plants as well as the animals in chrono-
logical order according to the percentages of living
and extinct forms, they have already disposed of,
and consigned to the "early" Tertiaries, etc., all the
probable vegetation on which these animals lived, and
thus have nothing left on which to feed the Rhi-
noceros, Elephant, etc., away within the Arctic Circle,
except a few miserable shrubs and lichens which now
survive there.

But this strange, inconsistent notion of Dana's
that the so-called Glacial phenomena lie in between
the warm Tertiary and the equally warm "Cham-
plain period," is easily understood as the survival
f the notion, so tenaciously held even later than
the middle decades of the nineteenth century, that
Man was not sl witness of any of the great geological
changes. When the evidence became overwhelming

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Change of Climate 201

that Man lived while the semitropical animals roamed
over England, the *^ Glacial period'' still remained
as a sort of buffer against the dangerous possi-
bility of extending the human period back any further.
I am not aware that this venerable scientist ever be-
came quite reconciled to the idea of *' Tertiary Man,"
though in his *' Manual" he mentions a few evidences
in favor of this now almost universally accepted
opinion.

As for the real teachings of the Drift phenomena,
there is no need of explanation here. At the very
most they are confined to a quite limited part of
the northern hemisphere, there being no trace of
them in Alaska, nor on the plains of Siberia, where
now almost eternal frosts prevail." In fact they are
practically confined between the Rocky Mountains
^\ and the Missouri River on the west, and the Ural
^ Mountains on the east; and with a little common
sense infused into the foundation principles of the
science, we shall cease to be tormented with a '^gla-
cial nightmare." Much of the Drift phenomena with
the raised beaches are certainly later events than
most of the other geological work, but are insepa-
rably connected with the general problem in their ex-
planation.' Even from the ordinary view-point, I
am not aware that the elaborate argument of Ho-

'See Dana's ''Manual/' pp. 945, 977; also ''The Glacial Night-
mare," pp. 451, 452, 511, etc.

*I have left this statement exactly as it appeared in the first
edition. But it is interesting to note how this opinion of the inseparable
connection with the other geological changes of the ancient shore-line
around all the continents is supported by Eduard 8uess. See "The
Face of the Earth,'' Vol. 2, pp. 497, 550, 554.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

202 The Fundamentals of Geology

worth has ever been satisfactorily answered. Indeed,
I feel almost like saying that this writer's various
contributions to the cause of inductive geology mark
the beginning of the dawn.

Hence it may suffice here to call attention merely
to the great simplicity introduced into this vast
complexity of the glacialists, by the positive as-
surance of this author that the ''Drift period" and
the Pleistocene end together, and join onto the mod-
ern ; or perhaps I should say that the so-called Glacial
phenomena lie in between the true fossil world and
our modern one.

Thus, in regard to the Pleistocene Mammals, the view is
now generally accepted that, in every place where they have
been found in a contemporary bed, that bed underlies the
till, and is therefore preglacial. As in other places, so here
[Scotland], teeth and bones of Mammals have occurred in
the clay itself; but in all such cases they occur sporadically
and as boulders. As Mr. James Geikie says, **They almost
invariably afford marks of having been subjected to the
same action as the stones and boulders by which they are
surrounded ; that is to say, they are rubbed, ground, striated,
and smoothed.'' — '^ Great Ice Age/' p. 129; ''Nightmare/'
p. 473.

And again:

The Pleistocene fauna, so far as I know, came to an end
with the so-called Glacial age. — Id., p. 463.

From a recent notice in Nature* it would seem
that even Dr. H. Woodward, of the British Museum,
supports this general view in his *' Table of British
Strata," by the statement that the Glacial deposits
contain only derived fossils.

"See Nature, April 11, 1901, p. 560.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Change of Climate 203

But this is so decided a simplification of the
problem of climate that I am utterly at a loss to
understand how any one can still cling to the com-
plex and highly artificial arrangement of numerous
''interglacial" periods, to account for a few bones
of Mammals or a few pockets of lignite; and how
they can even place between the ** Glacial period'*
and our times the '* genial Champlain period," with
it, as Dana says, ''abruptly terminated/' and be-
coming ''suddenly extreme as of a single winter's
night.'' Howorth, in the latter part of the chapter
already quoted from (pp. 460-478), gives a good
review of this subject of intermittent climates, and
strongly supports his contention that the strati-
graphical evidence all points to the fact that the
Pleistocene forms are always older than the Drift-
beds, and where the flora and fauna of the Pleis-
tocene occur in the Drift, they do so only as boulders ;
that, in fact, as he says in his preface, *'The Pleis-
tocene Flood . . . forms a great dividing line in the
superficial deposits," separating the true fossil world
from the modern. But when this much is settled,
the rest becomes very easy.

I have hardly the space to repeat here my argu-
ment about the extremely fanciful way in which
geologists classify the various members of the Ter-
tiary group and the Pleistocene. And yet I must
say a few words. I have tried to show the utter
nonsense of the common custom of classifying these
beds according to the percentage of living and ex-
tinct forms which they contain, when the real fact is

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

204 The Fundamentals of Oeology

that the number and kinds of the ancient life forms
which have survived into the modem era is a purely
fortuitous circumstance, being limited solely to those
lucky ones which could stand the radical change from
a tepid water or a genial air to the ice and frosts
which they now experience, to mention only one
circumstance of that cosmic convulsion which we
now know to have really intervened between that
ancient world and our own. Yet it is on such evi-
dence ONLY that these Pleistocene forms are sepa-
rated from the Tertiaries, or that the Tertiaries
themselves are classified off — at least so far as the
Invertebrates and the plants are concerned. No one
claims that the so-called Glacial beds can be sharply
distinguished from other deposits on purely mechan-
ical make-up. Indeed, I am strongly of the opinion
that very many Archaean soils, totally unfossiliferous
themselves, and resting on unfossiliferous rocks, have
been assigned to the ** Glacial age'' merely because
their discoverers did not know what else to do with
them. When beds contain fossils, the latter are the
one and only guide in determining age; but in view
of the purely arbitrary character of this method of
classifying off the Tertiary and Post-Tertiary rocks,
I do not see where we are going to draw the line
when we once admit that the Post-Tertiary beds
contain only ''derived fossils." It seems to me truly
astonishing that shrewd reasoners, like Howorth and
Dr. Woodward, have not seen the dangerous char-
acter of this precedent which they have admitted.
For with that marvelous climate of all geological

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Change of Climate 205

time continuing right up to that fatal day when it
was *' abruptly terminated,'' and the Mammoth and
his fellows were caught in the merciless frosts which
now hold them, the percentage of all the lucky forms
of life, plants, Invertebrates, or Mammals, which
could stand such a change and *' persist'' into our
modem world, must be utterly nonsensical as a test
of age even from their standpoint.

In resuming the main argument of this chapter,
I need only summarize by saying that the evidence
is conclusive that all geological time down to this
''great dividing line" was characterized by a sur-

V prisingly mild and uniform climate over all the
earth, for there is only one climate known to geol-
ogy proper. The modern period is characterized by
terrific extremes of heat and cold; and now little or

V nothing can exist where previously plant and animal
life flourished in profusion.

This radical and world-wide change in climate,
therefore, demands ample consideration when seek-
ing a true induction as to the past of our globe.
That it was no gradual or secular affair, but that the
climate ''became suddenly extreme as of a single
winter's night," the Siberian "mummies" are un-
answerable arguments. That it occurred within the
human epoch all are now agreed.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

CHAPTER XI

Degeneration

There is another great general fact about the
fossil world which seems to be a natural corollary
from the one already given about climate.

It is this:

The fossils, regarded as a whole, invariably supply
us with types larger of their kind and better devel-
oped in every way than their nearest modern repre-
sentatives, whether of plants or animals.

This fact also is so 'well known that it needs no
proof. Through the whole range of geological lit-
erature I do not know of a word of dissent from this
general fact by any writer whatever; Proof there-
fore is not necessary, though a brief review of a
little of the evidence may refresh our memories.

And the point to be especially noted here is that
this remarkable peculiarity is characteristic of all
the fossils; whereas when we cross over into our
modern era the change is just as sudden and com-
plete as is that of climate. Our modern plants and
animals, whether in the sea or on the land, are de-
generate dwarfs.

To begin with the Cambrian, Dana says:

The Pteropods, among MoUusks, were much larger than
the modern species of the tribe. The Trilobites even of the
206

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Degeneration 207

Lower Cambrian comprise species as large as living Crus-
taceans. The Ostracoids are generally larger than those of
recent times. — ^^ Manual/' p. 487,

Again, in speaking of the general character of
the Cambrian fossils, he says:

The types of the early Cambrian are mostly identical with
those now represented in existing seas, and although inferior
in general as to grade [in the ''phylogenic series ''], they
bear no marks of imperfect or stunted growth from unfit or
foul surroundings. — P. 485,

The well-known MoUusk, Maclurea magna, which
is so enormously abundant in the Silurian, is often
eight inches in diameter; and the astounding Cepha-
lopod genus, Endoceras, consisting of twenty species,
found only in two divisions of the Lower Silurian,
has left shells over a foot in diameter and ten or
twelve feet long!

Of the Fishes of the Devonian we have, among
other remarks of a similar character, the following:

The Dipnoans, or ''Lung-fishes/' were represented by
gigantic species called by Newberry Dinichthys and Titan-
ichthys, from their size and formidable dental armature.
... A still larger species is the Titanichthys clarki of New-
berry, in which the head was four feet or more broad, the
lower jaw a yard long. This jaw was shaped posteriorly like
an oar blade, and anteriorly was turned upward like a sled
runner.— Pp. 618, 619.

One of the ancient Eurypterids from the Old
Red Sandstone of Europe has a length of six feet,
which is more than three times that of any Crusta-
cean now living; while a gigantic Isopod Crustacean
from the same strata had a leg the basal joint of
which was three inches long, and three quarters of

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

208 The Fundamentals of Geology

an inch through, which is larger than the whole body
of any modern species.

The ancient ** Horsetails, " '* Ground-pines, ' '
Ferns, and Cycads were trees from thirty to ninety
feet high, and their carbonized stems and leaves make
up many of our largest and best beds of coal. Com-
pared with them the modern representatives are mere
herbs or shrubbery.

Of the gigantic Insects of the Devonian and Car-
boniferous beds we might make similar remarks.
Some of the ancient Locusts had an expanse of wing
of over seven inches; while many of the ancient
Dxagon-flies had bodies from a foot to sixteen inches
long, with wings a foot long and over two feet
in spread from tip to tip.

Here is James Geikie's summary of the leading

types of the Palaeozoic:

Many Palaeozoic species were characterized by their large
size as compared with species of the same groups that belong
to later times. Thus, some Trilobites and other Crustaceans
were larger than any modern species of Crustaceans. The
Palaeozoic Amphibians also much exceed in size any living
members of their class. Again, the modern Club-mosses,
which are insignificant plants, either trailing on the ground
or never reaching more than two feet in height, were repre-
sented by great lepidodendroid trees.

Sternberg, in speaking of some of the Frogs which
he found in the Permian of Texas, says:

I found several skulls that measured over a foot from the
end of the chin to the distal point of the horns. ... I
think when alive the Frog must have been six feet long. —
''Popular Science News/' May, 1902, p. 106,

He mentions another specimen which was ** about

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Degeneration 209

ten feet long,'^ the head of which was '* about twenty

inches in length," with jaws **more powerful than

those of an Ox/'

Of the monstrous Dinosaurs of the Mesozoic rocks

one hardly needs to speak.

They were the most gigantic of terrestrial animals, in
some cases reaching a length of 70 or 80 feet, while at the
same time they had a height of body and massiveness of
limb that, without evidence from the bones, would have been
thought too great for muscle to move. — Dana, '' Manual/'
p. 761.

They abound in both the Old and the New World.

Of the gigantic Mammals of the Tertiary beds
of the Western States, it would also be superjfluous
to speak; their gigantic size is known by every high
school pupil, or every one who has visited any im-
portant museum in Europe or America.

We may perhaps be reminded again that all the
species of these ^* older" rocks are extinct species.
I have already suggested the grave doubts on this
point, regarding the great mass of the lower forms
of life (pp. 125-144), plant and animal; but we will
let that pass. But let us take some of the ''late"
Tertiary and Pleistocene Mammals, which can not
be distinguished from living species, and how do we
fare? It is the same old story; the moderns are de-
generate dwarfs.

The Hippopotamus (ff. major) is a good one to
start with, for Flower and Lydekker' say that it
*'can not be specifically distinguished from H. am-
phibius'' of Africa. This gigantic brute used to live

** 'Mammals," etc., p. 281.
14 — Geology

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

210 The Fundamentals of Geology

in the rivers of England and Western Europe. The
text-books generally say in ''Pliocene times,'' be-
cause, I suppose, no one has the courage to suggest
that it lived under the ice of the ''Glacial period.''
We are always pointed to the wool on the Rhinoc-
eros and the Mammoth as indicating a somewhat cool
climate, but the well-known amphibious habits of the
Hippopotamus can not be so easily disposed of. But
if, as I believe, this world never saw a foot of ice
at the sea-level till the end of the "Pleistocene
period," to speak after the current manner, the
problem becomes very simple. In that case the time
of the Hippopotamus in England was neither earlier
nor later than that of the Palms and Acacias of the
"early" Tertiary or Mesozoic rocks, or than that
of the Mammoth, Lion, and Hyena of the Pleistocene.
There is, as we now know, absolutely nothing but an
out-of-date hypothesis to indicate that they did not
all live there together. We may, if we choose, try to
dovetail those conditions into the present on the basis
of uniformity and slow secular change, by assuming
a few million years for the process, but there is
not a particle either of evidence or of probability that
the Hippopotamus was not contemporary alike with
the Palms of the Eocene and the Elephants and
Lions of the Post-Tertiary.

As for the Mammoth itself, which Flower and
Lydekker have intimated may turn out identical with
E. columhi and E. armeniacus, and thus the direct
ancestor of the modern Asiatic Elephant {E. in-
dicus), some have argued that its average size was

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Degeneration 211

not greater than that of the existing species of India
and Africa. But Nicholson says that it was ''con-
siderably larger than the largest of living Ele-
phants, the skeleton being over sixteen feet in length,
exclusive of the tusks, and over nine feet in height."
(''Ancient Life-History," p. 357.)
Dana is equally positive:

The species was over twice the weight of the largest
modern Elephant, and nearly a third taller. — ' ^ Manual y'^
p. 998.

The upper incisors or tusks were very much
longer than in the modern species, being from ten
to twelve feet long, and sometimes curved up and
back so as to form an almost complete circle. As
these tusks continue to grow throughout life, their
enormous length is, I take it, a proof of much
greater longevity and thus of greater vitality than
in the case of the modern species. The latter is
simply a degenerate.

And so I might go on with the Edentates, the
Ungulates, the Eodents, the Carnivores, etc., for the
same thing must be said of all.

As Sir William Dawson remarks:

Nothing is more evident in the history of fossil animals
and plants of past geological ages than that persistence or
degeneracy is the rule rather than the exception. ... We
may almost say that all things left to themselves tend to
degenerate, and only a new breathing of the Almighty Spirit
can start them again on the path of advancement. — ^^ Modern
Ideas of Evolution/' Appendix.

In spite of the long popular views of Cuvier,
every modern scientist admits that the great Lion

Digitized by VjOOQIC

212 The Fundamentals of Geology

and Hyena of the Pleistocene are identical with the
living species of Africa. Many say the same thing
of the fossil Bear as compared with the modem
Brown Bear and the Grizzly, though, as Dana re-
marks of all three. Lion, Hyena, and Bear, 'Hhese
modern kinds are dwarfs in comparison/'
I quote again from Dana:

Thus the brute races of the Middle Quaternary on all the
continents exceeded the moderns greatly in magnitude. Why,
no one has explaimed.^—^* Geological Story Briefly Told/'
p. 229.

This was in 1875. In the last edition of his
^* Manual,'* published shortly after his death, he has
this to say in addition:

A species thrives best in the region of fittest climate. In
the Pleistocene, the fittest climate was universal. Geologists
have attributed the extinction of most of the species and the
dwindling of others to the cold of the Reindeer epoch. It
is the only explanation yet found, though seemingly insuf-
ficient for the Americas. — P. 1016.

However, since the discovery of the pictures of

the Eeindeer and the Mammoth drawn and even

painted side by side on the caverns of Southern

France (Figs. 32-35), undoubtedly from life and

by the same artist, we do not hear so much about

the ''Reindeer epoch" and the ''Mammoth epoch.''

A little thought should have suggested long ago that

it was more reasonable to suppose the Eeindeer,

Glutton, Musk-ox, etc., to have been originally

adapted to the high mountains and table-lands of

that ancient world, than to imagine all the fauna

careering up and down over continents and across

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Degeneration 213

seas like a lot of crazy Scandinavian Lemmings, as
the migration theory involved. But most geologists
seem never to have had any use for mountains or
plateaus, except to breed glaciers and continental
ice-sheets. But the only point which I wish to insist
upon here is that the cause, whatever it was, that
made such a zoological break at the ''close" of the
Pleistocene, and which compelled the shivering, de-
generate survivors, that could not stand the new ex-
tremes of frost and snow, to shift to the tropics —
this cause was certainly competent to do a good deal
more work in the way of ''extinction" or "dwin-
dling" of species than the uniformitarians have gen-
erally given it credit for.

And in summing up this matter regarding the
size and physical development of species, we must
confess that we find in geology no indication of in-
herent progress upward. Variation there is and
variation there has been, perhaps even "mutations"
and "saltations" that seem like the origin of veri-
table "new species"; but with one voice do the
rocks testify that the general results of such varia-
tion have not been upward. Rather must we con-
fess as a great biological law, that degeneration has
marked the history of every living form. But even
more important is the fact that this change from the
larger ancient forms to the smaller modern ones is
abrupt and complete over the whole globe, and coin-
cides exactly with the change from the fossil world
to the modern one.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

CHAPTER XII

Fossil Men

Thebe is still another fact which we must con-
sider ere we can frame any wise or safe induction
regarding the geological changes. It is this:

Man himself, to say nothing of numerous living
animals and plants, must have witnessed something
of the nature of a cosmic convulsion — how much,
it is the object of our search to find out. Even ac-
cording to the ordinary text-books, he must have seen
the uplifting of the greater part of the mountain
chains of the world; while he certainly lived in con-
ditions of climate, and of land and water distribution,
together with plant and animal surroundings, which
preclude the possibility of dovetailing those condi-
tions into the present order of things on any basis
of uniformity.

By this proposition I simply mean that Man must
have witnessed a cosmic geological catastrophe of
some character and of some dimensions. The true
nature and probable limits of this catastrophe ought
to be the chief point of all geological inquiry. But
instead of this method — instead of finding out
whether our present world was ever a witness of such
an event — the founders of the science began at the
little end of an assumed succession of life (involving

214

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fossil Men 215

a preposterous supernatural knowledge of the past),
and gradually worked up a habit of explaining every-
thing in terms of uniformity long decades before
they would acknowledge that Man or the present
order of things had anything to do with this fossil
world. The evidence on this latter point finally be-
came overwhelming; but with their habit of uni-
formity well mastered, and their long, single file of
life succession all tabulated off and infallibly fixed,
modem geologists have hitherto refused to look at
the whole science from this new point of view, or to
reconstruct geological theory if need be in accordance
with a true modern induction.

This problem regarding prehistoric Man, — the
length of time he has been on earth, his condition
at the beginning, and his relation to the great world
changes that have unquestionably taken place since
he came into existence, — has long been regarded as
one of the most perplexing in the whole realm of
science. For decades the world was agitated over
the problem of the origin of races, whether Man
originated from one race or several. Aristotle and
the other ancients had considered it a very simple
thing to account for the different races of mankind
by the effects of climate, food, occupation, and such
things. But our more precise modern knowledge has
taught us that the problem is not by any means so
easy. These influences are now known to be so slight
in amount and so slow in operation that it becomes
almost a hopeless task to account for the diversities
of the various races in any reasonable amount of

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

216 The Fundamentals of Geology

time by these agencies alone and without some abrupt
change that could be little short of miraculous. This
line of argument finds support in the remarkable
permanence of type displayed by various races after
being transplanted to other climates and other habits
of life. Again, peoples like the Bushmen and Negroes
\ may live for long periods side by side under the same
conditions of climate without becoming in any way
more alike. On the other hand, the forest tribes of
tropical Brazil show a striking resemblance to the
coast tribes of Terra del Fuego, in spite of extreme
differences in climate and food. Last of all, the
monuments of Egypt show that back at the very
dawn of history the various races were apparently
just as distinct as to-day in color, hair, and features.
All of these things have made it hard to under-
stand how such diverse races as the Negro, the Mon-
golian, and the Caucasian could possibly be derived
from a common stock without something very much
like a miracle. Philology, or the study of languages,
has given us about the same result; for fifty or
seventy-five distinct types of language have been
made out, such that no one kind can be considered
to be derived from any other, and yet we can not
understand how a language can ever be so com-
pletely transformed from within as to lose its origi-
nal roots entirely, and even change its entire plan
of structure. But in spite of all these considera-
tions, the unity of the human race is much more
generally accepted now than ever before. The popu-
lar geological notions have made people familiar

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Fossil Men

217

with the idea of almost unlimited periods of time,
and in this, as in geology proper, scientists have
tried to persuade themselves that a greatly extended
period of time might help to solve the problem.

As already remarked, Cuvier and his followers
not only denied that human remains are ever found

Fig. 32 — Engraving of a Mammoth. Cavern of Les Combarelles (Dordogne).
1-7. (After Capitan and Breuil.)

fossil, but denied most positively that any living
species is to be found in the fossil state. The ear-
liest reports of human remains being found in geo-
logical deposits, as given by Tournal and Christol
in 1828, by Schmerling in 1833, or even those of
M. Boucher de Perthes in 1841-1847, were largely
ignored; but from this point onward the French and

Digitized by

Google

218 The Fundamentals of Geology

the English geologists began to consider the matter
more carefully, and they found irresistible evidence
that Man lived contemporary with the Pleistocene
or Post-Tertiary animals. Godwin- Austen, as early
as 1840, had described human remains found mixed
up with those of the Mammoth, Ehinoceros, etc., in
Kent's Cavern, England; and a few years later simi-
lar cave deposits were discovered in France, cul-
minating in the sensational find of Lartet and
Christy (1865) of some drawings of Eeindeer on a
piece of horn, and a sketch of a Mammoth, showing
the Elephant's tusks and long hair, on a piece of
Mammoth's tusk from La Madeleine. From this
point the work of discovery has gone steadily for-
ward until to-day no intelligent man denies that
human remains have been found in deposits which
geologists classify as Pleistocene, Pliocene, and in
some cases even Miocene. •

Now, suppose it is settled by indisputable facts
than Man was contemporary with the animals of
the Middle Tertiary rocks. I am aware that a few
scientists still refuse to believe in ^^ Tertiary Man,"
and I admit that most of the rude stone implements
commonly relied upon to prove Man's existence at
that '* period" are far from convincing. But I have
little doubt that bones and other unequivocal human
remains have been found or may at any time be
found in beds containing Pliocene or Miocene fossils.

But in this fact, if it be a fact, that Man lived
under the wholly strange and different conditions of
Pliocene" or perhaps *^ Miocene times," is the

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fossil Men 219

VEBY STRONGEST POSSIBLE ARGUMENT that I Can COn-

\ ceive of for the necessity of a complete reconstruc-
tion of geological theory — I mean, of course, apart
altogether from the preposterous way in which the
life succession was assumed and built up and then
treated as an actual fact. It was when this grim fact
of Man's inseparable connection with the fossil world
was borne in upon me, that I began to realize the
possibility and imperative necessity of reconstruct-
ing the science on a truly inductive basis.

I shall not undertake to give a complete up-to-
date argument for ** Miocene" or even ^'Pliocene
Man." The subject is still under discussion as to
just how far back, along this thin line of receding life
forms, Man actually did live; and from the peculiar
methods now in vogue, which are wholly subjective
in character, it would seem to be capable of settle-
ment in almost any way one chooses. Thus, a very
high authority, in speaking of the river terraces in
which these most ancient human remains are found,
remarks, *^It is by no means easy, in the present
state of the land surface and with our present knowl-
edge, to place the remains in their relative sequence."
(^^EncyclopaBdia Britannica," Vol. 2, p. 246, Cam-
bridge University ed.) However, whole volumes are
being written on the subject, and the end is not yet.
But there is no denying that human remains have
frequently been found in strata which, but for their
presence, would have been assigned a place far back
in ''Tertiary time." The existence of strong evi-

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

220 The Fundamentals of Geology

dence for ''Tertiary Man" no one would think of
denying.

In all this, of course, I am considering the ques-
tion from the common unif ormitarian standpoint. But
why should it be necessary for us to settle positively
the question as to just how far back in ''geological
time" Man actually did live? For those who have
attentively read my statement of the unscientific
methods of classifying these Tertiary and Post-
Tertiary beds — or all the others, for that matter —
I need not here add any further argument. If the
accepted succession of life is, to put it as mildly as
possible, not quite a scientific certainty; if the time-
honored custom of classifying these so-called "super-
ficial" beds by their relative percentages of extinct
and living forms rests under a shadow of suspicion
as to its scientific accuracy; if, above all, we do not
at the beginning prejudice the whole case by the
assumption of uniformity, what need is there of
determining whether ^'Pliocene'' or ^^Miocene" shells
are found with these fossil human remains? What
material difference can it make, in a serious, scien-
tific treatment of this problem, whether five per
cent or twenty-five per cent or ninety-five per cent
of the associated Mollusks belong to "species"
classed as "extinct"?

That Man lived in Western Europe contemporary
with those giants of the prime, the Elephant and
the Musk-ox, the Ehinoceros and the Eeindeer, the
Lion, the Cape Hyena, and the Hippopotamus, at
which time a very different distribution of land and

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Fossil Men 221

water prevailed over these parts, with a radically
different mantle of climate spread over all, no one
will deny for a moment. Such facts are now found
in the primary text-books for our children in the
public schools.

But since geologists still classify the rocks as they
do, and give a time value to percentages of extinct
and living species of marine shells, etc., we are in
a measure compened to take the matter where we find
it, and inquire. How far back, in geological time —
that is, among what kinds of fossils — are human
remains found?

One of the best popular works on the subject that
I know of is '^The Meeting-Place of Geology and
History'' (1894), by Sir J. W. Dawson; though, like
all other works of its kind written from the religious
standpoint, it endeavors as far as possible to mini-
mize the evidence in support of Man's geological
antiquity.

This author thinks that Dr. Mourlan, of Belgium,
has ''established the strongest case yet on record
for the existence of Tertiary Man." (P. 30.) It
is that of some worked flints and broken bones of
animals ''imbedded in sands derived from Eocene
and Pliocene beds, and supposed to have been re-
manie by wind action." Prestwich' has brought
forward similar facts; and though the evidence in
favor of the genuine geological character of these
remains seems to me little if any better than that

'Controverted Questions of Geology/' Article 3, 1895.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

222 The Fundamentals of Geology

from the auriferous gravels of California, I am
willing to take them as reported.

Dawson speaks of the nearly entire human skele-
ton described by Quatrefages from the Lower Plio-
cene beds of Castelnedolo, near Brescia, and only
answers it with a sarcastic remark about the well-
developed skull of this ancient man.

Unfortunately the skull of the oi^v perfect skeleton is
said to have been of fair proportions^id superior to those
of the ruder types of Post-Glacial meq. This has east a shade
of suspicion on the discovery, especially on the part of evo-
lutionists, who think it is not in accordance with theory that
Man should retrograde between the Pliocene and the early
modern period instead of advancing. — ^^Meeting-Place,"
pp. 28, 29,

Lastly, we have the following about the Miocene :

There are, however, in France two localities (Puy-Courny
and Thenay), one in the Upper and the other in the Middle
Miocene, which have afforded what are supposed to be
worked flints.

He adds that **the geological age of the deposits
seems in both cases beyond question;" but contents
himself with a derisive answer about these chipped
flints being possibly **the handiwork of Miocene
apes.''

This language, coming from such a source, would
seem as good evidence as is needed to prove that Man
was contemporary witH, and that his remains are
now found among the fossils of, the Middle Miocene.
For it must be remembered that these are reluctant
admissions drawn from this illustrious scientist, who
was one of the last champions of the old ideas about

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Fossil Men 223

the ^* recent" origin of Man. As President Asa
Mahan of Cornell has said, '^Admissions in favor of
truth from the ranks of its enemies constitute the
highest kind of evidence. ' ' At any rate, I shall treat
this point as already proved, for whether this par-
ticular instance is accepted or not, practically all
modern writers admit the fact of '^ Middle Tertiary
Man."

Eeference has4Sfeady been made to the very re-
markable carvings and paintings on the cave walls
of Southwestern Europe. They have been discovered
quite generally throughout all this region, and usu-
ally consist of carvings* of Reindeer, Aurochs, Horses,
Mammoths, and various other animals, often life-
size, and painted in the most astonishing and real-
istic manner. Scientists are universally agreed as
to their great antiquity, for they argue that they
must have been done by men familiar with the forms
depicted, and hence the period of time must have
been when the Reindeer and the Elephant lived side
by side in France and Spain. Besides, the draw-
ings, are sometimes covered with limestone stalac-
tites two inches or more thick. The Marquis de
Nadaillac, who gave one of the first popular ac-
counts of these discoveries (Popular Science News,
February, 1902), remarked that '*the drawing is
wonderful," and that *'we are justly astonished to
find such artistic performances in times so distant
from ours, and in which we did not suppose a like
civilization." But the discoveries that have been
steadily made during the subsequent decade have

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

224

The Fundamentals of Geology

only added to the astonishment of the world at these
artistic performances so long hidden from our knowl-
edge. A few words from the Cambridge University
edition of the ** Encyclopaedia Britannica" will serve
to show the verdict of modern scholarship on this
point. We are told that these drawings ^' bring
before us a race of artists of first-rate capacity,

FiQ. 94 — Unfinished polychrome painting of two reindeer, showing how
painting was combined with engraving. Oavern of Font-de-Ganme (Dor<iU>gue).
1-20. (After Capitan and Breuil.)

who for accuracy of observation, and for skill in
indicating the character and peculiarities of the
animals around them, have never been surpassed."
(Vol. 2, p. 347.) But in addition to these life-size
drawings and paintings, we have also some very-
remarkable sculpture work, of which this authority
says :

If we are forced to marvel at the graphic skill of the
cavemen, their sculptures in the round are on a still higher

Digitized by

Google

Fossil Men 225

plane, as may be seen in the figures of Reindeer in ivory
in the British Museum. While they are not highly finished,
they show a complete understanding of the animal's peculiar
forms and contours, which are rendered in a direct, unhesi-
tating way that should betoken a long period of artistic train-
ing and an executive power uncommon at any time. These
drawings and sculptures have always been appreciated and
even regarded as being of a much more advanced style than
was to be expected among men who are always classed in
the lower grades of culture. But enough stress has not hith-
erto been laid on the artistic quality of the work, which would

Fig. 35 — Red Drawing of Rhinoceros tichorhinua, from Font-de-Gaume.
(After Capitan and Breuil.)

be considered fine at any time in the world's history. . . .
There are many astonishing problems in archaeology, but none
so badly in need of solution. — /&., id.

The accompanying cuts (Figs. 32-35) are taken
from the Eeport of the Smithsonian Institution for
1909; but they can convey only a very poor idea of
these drawings and paintings as they really are.
Two plates in the ''Encyclopaedia Britannica," ac- \
companying the article on painting (Vol. 20, p. 462,
Plates 1 and 2) may serve to give a better idea of
what they are like, also Plates 2 and 3 accom-
panying the article on archaeology.

15 — Geology

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

226 The Fundamentals of Geology

But we must now deal with the much more per-
plexing question of time. When were these draw-
ings made? What people made them? On the ac-
companying diagram (Fig. 33), which is taken from
the article by G. G. MacCurdy, in the Smithsonian
Report for 1909, already referred to, these drawings
are assigned to the Upper Palaeolithic ^* period,"
which corresponds with the Upper Quaternary *^ pe-
riod" of geology. These drawings are almost uni-
versally assigned to the Cro-Magnon ^^race," so
named from a locality in Dordogne, France, where
some skeletons were found in 1858. These people
of Cro-Magnon and Menton were evidently almost a
race of giants, some of them being seven feet tall,
with a very extraordinary muscular development, as
proved by their bones, while their skulls were large
and well formed, and as even an out-and-out evolu-
tionist admits, ^Hheir cranial capacity was above
that of average Europeans of the present day."
(N. C. MacNamara, Nature, March 7, 1901.) The
skull of the Old Man of Cro-Magnon has a capacity

\ of 1,590 cubic centimeters, or 119 cubic centimeters
more than the average of 125 modern Parisian skulls,
while this man had lived to so great an age that,

^ though every tooth was sound, they had all been worn
"^down to the very sockets.

Now if we decide that these Cro-Magnon people
were the race who did the drawings on the walls
of the caves, we are in effect assigning them to the
Palaeolithic period, which is a tolerably well-defined
period of antiquity, or at least is separated from the

Digitized by.VjOOQlC

Fossil Men 227

Neolithic period by a well-marked break that can not
be ignored, while the latter period passes by insen-
sible gradations into the modern period. Very likely
we shall one day make a distinction between the
age in which these men lived and the true geological
period when that warm spring-like climate covered
all the earth, making the so-called Ice ^*age" a
local affair, confined to only a part of the world,
and subsequent to the real geological age, the latter
being thus extended to cover all the great geological
changes in other parts of the world, including the
Pleistocene, or Quaternary. But in the present state
of our knowledge we are not able to do this effect-
ively. Scientists universally associate these men of
the caves with the Pleistocene fauna of Europe,
making this Ice *'age" the last of the true geo-
logical series, though in other lands where the Ice
catastrophe did not extend, the Pleistocene blends
with the Tertiary without any sharp line of dis-
tinction. "

Thus there is no valid reason, from the common
view-point, for saying that these Cro-Magnon men
were not contemporary with the fauna of the Plio-

* stated in terms of Bible history, this would mean that these men
of the caves were not really antediluvian, but only very early post-
diluvian; that they were acquainted only by tradition with some of
the animals they have depicted; and that where their bones are found
along with those of the Elephant, Rhinoceros, etc., in the latitude of
England and France, it is only because of the general mix-up that
occurred at the time of this Ice catastrophe, which seems to have been
an event quite subsequent to the other geological work. The whole
question is at present in too complicated a state to admit of very
* definite solution; and on this account the author has preferred to use
only the argumentum ad hominem which takes these geological dis-
tinctions and classifications as commonly understood.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

228 The Fundamentals of Geology

cene or the Miocene. At least some men were, as
commonly admitted; and why not these as well as
any others? For if we admit that any human remains
whatever are of real geological age, it is only a very
artificial distinction that will separate ^'Glacial"
Man from the men of the Middle Tertiary period.
And in the name of common-sense science, if the
human period is thus elastic enough to stretch out
over the Pleistocene, the Pliocene, and clear back
to the ** Middle Miocene," why can't we do the same
for all of Man's strange companions, the Mammoth
and the Cape Hyena, the Reindeer and the Hippo-
potamus, the Lion and the Musk-ox, etc.? We used
to hear a good many sneers about its being impos-
sible for this apparently incongruous mixture to live
side by side, and hence some writers described a
*^ Mammoth age" and a '* Reindeer age," and so
on, ad nauseam. Since the discovery of these com-
panion pictures of the Mammoth and the Reindeer
side by side, to say nothing of the numerous in-
stances where the bones of all these Pleistocene ani-
mals are found mixed indiscriminately together, we
do not hear so much of this nonsense; still it is to
be feared that it has not yet wholly disappeared.
^ But just as diverse faunae can now be found living
^. within a short distance of each other in India, Africa,
South America, or any other part of the tropical
world where high mountains and low, moist plains
exist side by side, it is the most reasonable thing in
the world to suppose that these Elephants, Lions,
and Hippopotami lived beneath the '* Middle Ter-

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fossil Men 229

tiary" Palms, Cinnamons, and Mimosas of the lower
elevations, while the Reindeer, Musk-ox, and Glutton
lived beneath the Maples, Birches, and Beeches of
the high mountainsides.

As I have already remarked several times, the
truly scientific attitude of mind would be to take
all these types of life that now coexist in our modern
* world as living contemporaneously in that older
world, until we find positive evidence to the contrary,
and we all know that such evidence has never been
brought forward. The burden of proof rests on those
who declare that this ancient world, whose magnificent
ruined relics we now find beneath our feet, was not
\* just as complete and harmonious a unit in its plant
and animal life as is our own. Things which are
equal to the same thing must be equal to one another ;
hence the plants and animals that are now contem-
porary with Man may correctly and scientifically be
associated with one another wherever we find them;
therefore if human remains are found in Miocene
beds as well as in the Pliocene and the Pleistocene,
what line of logic will forbid the idea that Man and
all his Pleistocene companions were really contem-
porary with the flora and fauna of the Middle Ter-
tiary? There is absolutely no method of reasoning
deserving to be called scientific to show that such
was not the case ; and as already remarked, inductive
science must ever put the burden of proof on those
who affirm that one of these sets of life lived before
the other.

In reality the question is very simple: Are human

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

230 The Fundamentals of Geology

remains found in the real fossiliferous rocks? Is
Man found fossil like the other animals? Geologists
universally answer in the affirmative, and say that
human remains have been found in the Pleistocene,
the Pliocene, or even in the Middle Miocene rocks.

We may now proceed to inquire what geological
changes have occurred since the ^* Middle of the Mio-
cene," according to the accepted teachings of geology.
We may consider these changes under three heads.

1. Our first point must be that of climate, and I
have already given abundant evidence to show that
at that ^Hime" an abundant warm-climate vegetation
mantled all the Arctic regions. As already quoted
from Wallace, throughout the whole Arctic regions,
and during the whole of geological time, ^^we find
one uniform climatic aspect of the fossils," and ''\i
is quite impossible to ignore or evade the force of
the testimony as to the continuous warm climate of
the north temperate and polar zones throughout Ter-
tiary times."

That this astonishingly mild and uniform climate
prevailed over these regions until and during the
time of the Mammoth, we ought not to have a shadow
of doubt. What single bit of positive evidence is
there to show that it did not? That he must have
had some such vegetation on which to feed is certain,
and there is no proof of any previous interruption
of these conditions save a series of hypotheses. He
and his fellows browsed on semitropical and warm
temperate plants far within the Arctic Circle, if th^re
happened to be land there, doubtless over the very

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fossil Men 231

pole itself; but suddenly, lo, something caught him
with the grip of death —

And wrapped his corpse in winding-sheet of ice,
And sung the requiem of his shivering ghost.

Who has not read of their untainted meat now
making food for Dogs and Wolves? Their stomachs
are well filled with undigested food, showing, as one

y author remarks, that they **were quietly feeding
when the crisis came/' Dr. Hertz recently reported
, one not only with its stomach full of food, but with
' its mouth full, too. No wonder that even an ortho-
dox geologist like Professor Dana is compelled to
say that these things prove ^Hhat the cold finally

V became suddenly extreme, as of a single winter's
night, and knew no relenting afterward.''

Here then is one very notable geological event
which has taken place within the human epoch, and
the only thing of its kind of which geology has an
undeniable record; namely, a sudden and radical

y change in the earth's climate, a cosmic affair, and not
a local phenomenon. I need not here attempt to
discuss the how of this world catastrophe as it must
have been, or the other changes inseparably involved.
The fact itself is as certain as Man's own existence.
2. The next division of our subject, in further con-
sideration of the changes that have taken place since
Man's existence, as stated at the beginning of this

. chapter, relates to the changes of land and water
distribution since ^'Middle Miocene times." And
here again I shall take the classification of these
rocks just as I find them.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

232 The Fundamentals of Geology

The first thing which impresses us is the ex-
tremely fragmentary distribution of the Miocene and
Pliocene beds. Not, however, that they are uncom-
mon or yet of small extent. On the contrary they
are scattered over America and Eurasia — and all
the rest of the globe for that matter — like the spots
on a Leopard, or the warts on a Toad's back, till it
becomes one of the unsearchable mysteries of the
science how^ these innumerable patches can be got
down under the ocean to receive their load of sedi-
ment, without deluging the surrounding regions in a
similar manner. But then, to be sure, fresh-water
lakes will answer the same purpose, and are particu-
larly indicated (?) when the proportion of plants and
terrestrial animals is in excess of the true marine
fossils. And so enormous fresh- water basins are
described here and there, with the great Mammals
crowding about their margins in their zeal to be-
come fossilized, that the mountain tops may be saved
from going under once more — or perhaps I should
say to enable the modern writers to get some of these
strata puckered up to their full height before these
^4ate" Tertiary deposits were made. This moun-
tain-making business is another ajffair that geologists
would like to have take place on the instalment plan,
but unfortunately it seems to have been nearly all
postponed till the very close of ^^ geological time."
This arrangement of fresh-water lakes saves the
central Rocky Mountain region from going down
again beneath the deep. But it can not save the
Alps, Juras, and Apennines in Europe, nor the Hima-

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fossil Men 233

layas and most of the other mountains in Asia, nor
the coast region of California and Oregon in America,
to say nothing of large parts of the Andes in South
America, with regions in Africa and Australia.

But what is the use of trying to figure out the
amount of our earth which has been under the ocean
since *^ Middle Tertiary times," and thus since Man
was upon it? To save the northern half of Europe
with all of Canada from again going under at the
close of the ^* Tertiary period," geologists have
spread out their continental ice-sheets, and have
asked them to do duty instead of water. But this is
hardly sujfficient, for the ^^ upper" or *4ater" part
of the so-called ^^ Glacial" deposits are clearly strati-
fied; and hence they either invoke a ^' -flood vast
beyond conception,'' as Dana does in America for
the ** final event in the history of the glacier," or,
as others prefer, the whole region is baptized again.
As Dawson says in his ^^Meeting-Place of Geology
and History," ''No geological fact can be better
established than the Post-Glacial subsidence."

But I must not weary the reader by dwelling on
this monotonous repetition of catastrophes — for
must they not have been catastrophic if such ups
and downs of whole continents are crowded within
the human period? We may allow a number of thou-
sands of years for Man's possible existence, but
archaeology and history alike protest against the mil-
lions of years required to explain these continental
oscillations on any basis of uniformity. One such
period of horror ought to be enough for us, and to

Digitized by VjOOQIC

234 The Fundamentals of Geology

understand or explain it in a truly scientific manner,
we must with it correlate the sudden and world-wide
change of climate already described.

3. One more point demands consideration ere we
complete this subject of what Man has witnessed of
geological change. For, according to current theory,
almost all the mountains have been either wholly
formed or at least completed within quite ^^recent"
times; indeed, many of the greatest mountain chains
have been puckered up from the position of hori-
zontal strata beneath the sea wholly since ^^ Miocene
times," which for us means since Man was upon
the globe.

Thus Dana, in speaking of the part of Western
America which has been elevated since ^'Miocene
times," says that it ** probably included the whole
of the Pacific mountain border, from the line of the
Mississippi Valley to the Pacific coast line and out-
side of this line for one or more scores of miles."
(^^ Manual," p. 364.)

And he adds the significant words:

Contemporaneously, similar movements were in progress
over the other continents : along the Andes, affecting half, at
least, of South America; the Pyrenees, Carpathian Alps, and
a large part of Europe; the Himalayas and much of Asia.
— P. 365,

Let us now take a brief glance at a few of the
details of what these mountains were thus doing
while Man was living in semitropical England, or
at least Western Europe.

In speaking of foreign examples of Tertiary moun-

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Fossil Men 235

tain making, this author devotes especial attention
to the Alps and the Juras, for their structure is bet-
ter understood, having been more carefully studied.
And of an example described by Heim, already
spoken of, he says.:

One of the overthrust folds in the region has put the beds
upside down over an area of 450 square miles. Fifty thou-
sand feet of formations of the Jurassic, Cretaceous, Eocene
Tertiary, and Miocene Tertiary, were upturned at the close
of the Miocene period. — P. 367,

With what a whack must this mighty mass of
rocks have fallen on itself — miles in thickness, and
turned ^^ upside down over an area of 450 square
miles 'M

Of course I am here taking the record just as I
find it, as I have already discussed this matter of
*^ overthrust folds."

I need not give further examples from the other
great mountain ranges. Their structure is not so
well understood as that of the Alps, though doubt-
less when examined they will be found just as
^* young,'' and just as full of astonishing mountain
movements, as those already examined. But this
much is already certain, — that practically over all
the world the mountains were either completed or
wholly raised from the sea-level during ''late Ter-
tiary'' and ''early Quaternary time." No wonder
Dana says that this fact "is one of the most marvel-
ous in geological history."

It has been thought incredible that the orographic climax
should have come so near the end of geological time, instead
of in an early age when the crust had a plastic layer beneath.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

236 The Fundamentals of Geology

and was free to move; yet the fact is beyond (luestion. —
''Manual," p. 1020,

. I think I have now abundantly proved the various
heads of the proposition with which 1 began this
chapter, taking them in reverse oxder; namely, that
even from* the standpoint of the current theories : *

1. Man must have seen the entire elevation or
at least the completion of practically all the great
mountains of the world, such as the Eockies, Andes,
Alps, Carpathians, Caucasus, Himalayas, etc.

2. The relative distribution of land and water
surface has — since Man's advent as commonly stated
— changed completely. The land and water have
practically changed places over the greater part of
the globe.

3. Man lived while the Arctic regions had a mild.

* In this discussion I have purposely ignored the various instances
where human remains have been reported from deposits of even greater
** antiquity ' ' than the Middle Tertiaries. For instance, there was pub-
lished anonymously in 1857, by Judd & Glass, London, a book entitled
*^ Voices from the Bods; or Proofs of the Existence of Man during
the FdUBOZoic or Most Ancient Period of the Earth,' ' This book was
carefully and candidly written in the light of the best knowledge then
obtainable, for it was during the very heat of the discussion as to
whether or not Man is ever found in the fossil state. Some of the
examples there recorded have since been *' explained ' ' in one way or
another, while others have been ignored entirely. Other reports of
human remains having been found in Palaeozoic or Mesozoic rocks appear
now and then, but are soon laughed out of countenance by scientific
ridicule, and never find their way into orthodox scientific literature.
The following words, quoted from the book mentioned above, are just
as pertinent to-day regarding the attitude of the current geology toward
new facts that disagree with the popular theories: *' These discoveries
are so clear and incontrovertible that impartial inquirers after truth
are amazed at the obstinacy with which geologists persist in shutting
their eyes to the real facts in the case. The world affords no parallel
to such conduct, unless, perhaps, that of the Church of Borne in refer-
ence to the discoveries of Galileo.'' (Page 142.)

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Fossil Men 237

soft climate, and he lived to see these conditions so
suddenly changed that some of his dumb brute com-
panions were caught in the waters and frozen so
speedily that their flesh has remained untainted.
Other considerations show this change of climate
to have affected the whole globe.

The lesson to be drawn from this fact about
fossil Man as the last fact in the line of cumulative
evidence relating to the fossil world, will be con-
sidered in the following chapter.

Digitized by VjOOQIC

CHAPTER XIII

Scientific Methods

In Part One of this book I tried to examine into
the facts and methods which are comm6nly supposed
to prove that there has been a succession of life
on the globe. We found that this life succession
theory has not a single fact to support it; that it
is not the result of scientific research, but wholly
the product of an inventive imagination; that no one
kind of fossil has ever been proved or can be proved
to be intrinsically older than another, or than Man
himself; and hence that a complete reconstruction of
geological theory is imperatively demanded by our
modern knowledge.

In short, that ancient world whose ruins we now
\ have as fossils was a unit, and simply an older state
of our present world. All the important groups of
living plants and animals have now been found as
fossils, and their classification does not represent a
time value in the one case any more than in the
other. The geological series of fossils represents
merely taxonomic relationships, just as would a
similar arrangement of the living species, nothing
more.

In Part Two the following additional facts have
been brought out:

238

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Scientific Methods 239

1. The abnormal character of much of the fossil-
iferous deposits,

2. A radical and world-wide change of climate.

3, The marked degeneration in passing from the
fossil world to the modern one,

4, The fact that the human race, to say nothing
of a vast number of living species of plants and
animals, has participated in some of the greatest of
the geological changes — we really know 'not how
to limit the number or character of these changes.

These additional facts still further emphasize the
unity or solidarity of that ancient world. They show
how all its parts are indissolubly bound together in
a common fate, and how sharply and distinctly it is
diflferentiated from our modern world by an impass-
able boundary-line of world-wide geological changes
that true science can never ignore.

Surely a true spirit of scientific investigation
would now begin to inquire, How did these changes
take place?

In any truly heuristic or Baconian study of
geology as a whole, the rocks of the so-called Glacial
age and the Tertiaries, the surface rocks (at least
on the surface in England and Germany where first
examined), will not be, as Zittel says they have been,
'^the last to be understood," and only attacked after
geological history had been started away back in
eternity, and all the details of the successive ages
had been arranged according to the doctrine of
uniformity and a priori methods of reasoning, with
the very natural result that, failing to make a good

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

240 The Fundamentals of Geology

splice of these two ends of our slipshod investiga-
tions, V© have for over half a century been labor-
ing under a '* glacial nightmare,'' and these de-
posits on the very top of the ground ** still remain
in many respects the despair of geology,"

But there is no science in all this. Is it scien-
tific to start with what we know the least about,
and force our more accurate knowledge of things
at hand lo square with our theories of things more
remote? The current geology has never used a trace
of sound Baconian science in these fundamental
principles and methods, but, as a burlesque on in-
V ductive science, has always started with some hypo-
thetically oldest forms, and after having located them
at the vanishing-point of the vistas of a past eternity,
has trusted to its skill in dead-reckoning to be able
to work up .by slow stages to the present, and to
arrive here with a sufficiently small cargo of 'Hiving"
species undisposed of to splice on to the present
smoothly and safely on the basis of uniformity and
slow secular change. Such is geology by hypothe-
sis, — from the subjective standpoint. It is a kind
of '^ science" by which some people have for a
century or so tried to explain the known in terms
of the less known or the unknown. Such are the
methods ''which dominated mediaeval scholasticism
and made it so barren."

It requires no scientific instruments of precision
to recognize in all this a mere travesty on the
methods of Bacon and Newton, and it requires but
little training in the latter to suggest the better

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Scientific Methods 241

way. Let us throw to the winds all speculations as
to how the world was made, and hold our restive
imaginations within the bounds of legitimate science
by the strong rein of demonstrable fact, content if
we can really explain a few things that have hap-
pened since the beginning. And let us start with
the most obvious facts on hand, namely, Man and
all the living species of plants and animals; and
with all inherited prejudices about ^* extinct species''
cast aside, by working back among the strata, let
us find where and how their fossils occur, and then
decide as best we can how they were placed there,
and how the intervening changes took place. Focus-
ing all of our powers on all the human remains of
real geological age wherever found, and on the fos-
sils of all species of plants and animals now living
anywhere on earth, let us, with all the known facts
of biology, palaBontology, and meteorology, endeavor
to reconstruct the flora and fauna of that ancient
world and the marvelously uniform climate in which
they lived. And after having thus obtained a good,
broad view of the fossil world as a whole, we may
possibly be prepared to determine how that almost
Eden-like world was transformed by a sudden and
awful catastrophe into this wholly different modern
world with which we are familiar. Then, whatever
rocks we have left over after these things are de-
cided, we may very safely assign to the indefinite
and (in a scientific way) indeterminable period of
the earth's previous existence. This is the only
method fit to be termed scientific.

16— Geology

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

242 The Fundamentals of Geology

Surely it is little short of absolute nonsense to
begin somewhere away back in eternity, and, con-
trary to our universal modern experience, dogmatize
about certain times back there when there were no
zoological provinces and districts, but only one and
the same assemblage of living creatures everywhere
on earth, and on the strength of. this monstrous as-
sumption formulate our pretty theories as to how
this deposit was made, and how that was laid down,
and the exact order in which they all occurred; while
these '^recent" deposits, in which our race and all
our companion plants and animals are acknowledged
to be concerned, are left over till the last, and we
then find that the two are incommensurable, and, as
Howorth and Suess have so clearly shown, can never
be made to splice onto our modern conditions. Thus
we ourselves, to say nothing of thousands of living
species of plants and animals, have participated in
some of the very greatest of the geological changes, —
we know not how many or how great. The^e things
should first be explained. Has anything happened
to our world that will explain them ? Are there
known forces and changes now in operation which,
granting time enough, will amply and sufficiently
explain these facts as simply one in kind with those
of the present day?

To this last question we must admit that our
historic experience, prolonged over several thousand
years, utters a thundering NO! Volcanoes are every
now and then breaking forth; but volcanoes and
mountain ranges have nothing in common with one

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Scientific Methods 243

another as to structure and origin. No one claims
that a single mountain flexure is now being formed
or has been formed within the historic period; while,
as Suess remarks, ^Hhe formation of mountains evi-
^ dently belongs to quite another series of phenomena''
from the great exchanges of ocean and dry land that
once took place. (^'The Face of the Earth,'*
Preface 5.) There are indeed *^ creeps" in the
rocks in certain places, but these are not such as
to contribute to the height of the mountains m
which they occur, but rather the reverse. Sudden
changes of level within small areas have occurred,
but neither in extent nor in kind do they furnish
any key as to past changes of level ; while the so-
^ called '* secular" changes are so microscopic in
amount and so ambiguous in character that they are
utterly unworthy of consideration in view of the
tremendous problems which we are trying to ex-
plain. Indeed, the great work of Eduard Suess has
demonstrated conclusively that, to quote his own
words, 'Hhe theory of the secular oscillations of
the continents is not competent to explain the re-
peated inundation and emergence of the land" (Vol.
2, p. 540) ; for even in those localities, like Sweden
and Greenland, which have been supposed to be
rising or falling, ^^displacements susceptible of meas-
urement have not occurred within the historic pe-
riod." (Vol, 2, p. 497.)

• In fact, this most accomplished scientist, after
summing up the whole wisdom of modern science on

Digitized by VjOOQIC

244 The Fundamentals of Geology

these subjects, writes the epitaph of the old uni-
formitarianism in such language as the following:

Thus, as our knowledge becomes more exact, the less are
we able to entertain those theories which are generally of-
fered in explanation of the repeated inundation and emer-
gence ol the continents. — Vol. 2, p. 295,

Any comment of mine on these words ought to
be superfluous.

As for climate, I never heard any one suggest
that cosmic changes of climate are now known to be
going on, much less that sudden changes of the kind
indicated by the North Siberian ^'mummies" are
in the habit of occurring. In fact, we must all own
that the mountains, the relative position of land and
water, as well as the climate of our globe, are each
and all now in a state of stable equilibrium, and have
been in this state since the dawn of history or of
scientific observation.

Accordingly I ask, How much time is needed to
account for the facts before us on the basis of this
bankrupt uniformity? Indeed, will a short eternity
itself satisfy the stem problem before us I I can
not see that it holds out the slightest promise of
solving it; while, on the" other hand, I am sure that,
in dealing with the past of Man's existence (theories
of evolution and all other theories of origins what-
ever cast aside), we are not at liberty to make unrea-
sonable demands on time. The evidence of history
and archaBology is all against it.

From the latter sciences it can be shown that at
their very dawn we have, over all the continents.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Scientific Methods 245

a group of civilizations seldom equaled since, except
in very modern times, and all so undeniably related
to one another and of such a character that they
prove a previous state of civilization in some locality
^ together, before these scattered fragments of our
race were dispersed abroad. We can track these
vaftous peoples all back to some region in South-
-western Asia, though the exact locality for this
source of inherited civilization has never yet been
found, and it is now almost certain that it is some-
how lost in the geological changes which have inter-
vened. For when we cross the well-marked boundary-
line between history and geology, if the palaeolithic
remains of Western Europe are really of geological
age, we have still to deal with men who apparently
were not savages, men who with tremendous disad-
vantages could carve and draw and paint as no
savages have ever done, and who had evidently
domesticated the Horse and other animals. But as
to time, history gives no countenance to long time,
that is, what geologists would call long. Authentic
history extends back a few score centuries, archae-
ology may promise us a few more. As for millions
of years, or even a few hundred thousands, the thing
seems too absurd for discussion, unless we forsake
inductive methods, and assume some form of evolu-
tion a priori, and contrary to all experience and all
the evidence.

At any rate, as we have seen, human remains are
found fossil just the same as other forms of life,
and there is absolutely no way of proving that these

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

246 The Fimdamentals of Geology

fossil men are not as old as any other fossils. What-
ever proves the latter old does the same for Man;
but if we insist on the comparatively ^^ modern"
character of these fossil human remains, we must
admit the same for all the other fossils, because
inductive science insists that the fossil world was a
unit, and that man must have been contemporary
with all alike. True science can never take us back
of this state when all existed contemporaneously;
for it would require a supernatural knowledge of
the past to discriminate among the fossils, and say
that one particular group existed before the others
and occupied the world exclusively for ages before
they came into existence. As we have seen, all
efforts thus to lay out a history of organic creation
as Cuvier's ^^ glorious" vision pictured it to him,
have ended in a miserable failure, because such ef- _^
forts are along lines so false that they are rapidly <
making geology a laughing-stock to the other sci- J
ences founded on the principles of Bacon and \^
Newton. The fossil world is a unit, and simply -
represents the ruins of an older state of our pres- ^
ent world; and whatever geological changes they , •
indicate, must have taken place since Man was on -
the earth, for there is no possible line of scientific
reasoning to convince us that any single type of --
fossil is older than the human race.

Hence it ought to be evident that no amount
of learned trifling with time will solve our problem
without supposing some strange event to have hap-
pened to our world and our race, long ago, and be-

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Scientific Methods 247

fore the dawn of history. I see no possible way for
scientific reasoning to avoid this conclusion. Ignor-
ing for the present the Chaldean Deluge tablets,
and what Eawlinson calls the ** consentient belief"
in a world-catastrophe '* among members of all the
great races into which ethnologists have divided
mankind, ' ' which like their civilization has the hall-
marks of being an inheritance from some common
source before their dispersion, we may note that
most geologists now admit the certainty of some sort
of catastrophe since Man was upon the earth. I
might mention Quatrefages and Dupont, Boyd Daw-
kins, Howorth, Prestwich, Wright, and Sir William
Dawson, with many others. Even Eduard Suess
teaches a somewhat similar local catastrophe, though
like the others only as a reluctant concession to the
insistent demands of Chaldean history and archaeo-
logical tradition. But all of these affairs are mere
makeshifts in view of the tremendous demands of
the purely geological evidence, and all alike (save
perhaps those of Wright and Howorth) labor under
the strange inconsistency of supposing that such an
event could occur without leaving abundant and
indelible marks upon the rocks of our globe; while
in view of the evidence given through the previous
pages, I insist that the purely geological evidence
of a world catastrophe is immeasurably stronger
than that of archaBology, that in fact the whole of
the geological phenomena constitute a cumulative
argument of this nature.

But if this be granted, we must then inquire.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

248 The Fundamentals of Geology

What was its nature? and what its extent? The
former is quite easily answered; the latter problem
is still somewhat beyond our reach.

As to its character, the evidence is very plain.
It was a veritable cataclysm of some sort; it deals
with great changes of land and water surface. If the
life succession is but a hoary myth, and if it turns out
that we find countless modern living species of
plants and animals mixed up in all the ''older*'
rocks, we can not ignore these in a rational and
unprejudiced reconstruction of the science. But,
ignoring these, we must remember that even the
Tertiary and Post-Tertiary deposits are absolutely
world-wide, and are packed with fossils of living
species. Not a continent and scarcely a country on
the globe but contains great stretches of these latter
deposits, laid down by the sea where now the land
is high and dry. The sea and land have practically
shifted places over all the globe since Man and
thousands of other living species left their fossils
in the rocks. It is only the stupendous magnitude
of these changes which has made our scientists re-
luctant to admit the possibility of such a catastrophe.

With the myth of a life succession dissipated, a
broad view of the fossil world can not fail to con-
vince the mind of the reality of some such cosmic
convulsion, and convince it with all the force of a
mathematical demonstration. Great groups of ani-
mals have dropped out of sight over all the conti-
nents, and their carcasses have been buried by sea
water where we now find high plateaus or mountain

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Scientific Methods 249

ranges. Ignoring again for the moment the abundant
fossils in the so-called ''older'' rocks, and fixing our
attention entirely on the Tertiary and Pleistocene
beds that are acknowledged to be closely connected
with the human race and the modern world, we still
have a problem in race extinction alone that appals
the mind. The Mammoth, Rhinoceros, and Masto-
don, together with ''not less than thirty distinct
species of the Horse tribe," as Marsh says, all dis-
appear from North America at one time, and the
most ingenious disciple of Hutton and Lyell has been
puzzled to invent a plausible explanation. But when
we consider that at this same "geological period"
similar events were occurring on all the other con-
tinents — the huge Ground-sloths (Megatheriums)
and Glyptodons in South America; "Wombats as
large as Tapirs," and "Kangaroos the size of Ele-
phants," in Australia; the Mammoth and the Woolly
Rhinoceros in Eurasia; together with an enormous
Hippopotamus, as far as England is concerned, to
say nothing of those great Bears, Lions, and Hyenas,
with a semitropical vegetation, all disappearing to-
gether at the same time, or shifting to the other side
of the world — it becomes almost like a deliberate
insult to our intellectual honesty to be approached
with offers of "explanations" based on any so-called
"natural" action of the forces of nature. But when,
in addition to all this, we consider the fact that those
human beings of the deposits of Western Europe
were contemporary with the animals mentioned above,
and disappeared along with them at this same time,

Digitized by VjOOQIC

250 The Fundamentals of Geology

while mountain masses in all parts of the ivorld
crowded with marine forms of the so-called ''older"
types positively can not be separated in time from
the others, it becomes as certain as any otiier ordi-
nary scientific fact, like sunrise or sunset, that our
once magnificently stocked world met with some
sudden and awful catastrophe in the long ago; and
is it in any way transgressing the bounds of true
inductive science to correlate this event with the
Deluge of the Hebrew Scriptures and the traditions
of every race on earth!

We have already seen how Dana supposes two
other such events, one at the close of the ** Palaeozoic
age," and the other at the close of the *^Mesozoic,"
merely to account for the astonishing disappearance
of species at these periods when the fossils are ar-
ranged in taxonomic order; but if we once admit
one such event with Man and all the other species
contemporary with one another, where shall we limit
its power to disturb the land and water and churn
them all up together, leaving the present simply as
the ruins of that previous world? Or how shall we
proceed on sound scientific principles to discrimi-
nate between the extinct fossils that may have had
to run the gauntlet of such an aqueous convulsion,
and decide that only a certain limited few of them
had their extinction due to this event, and then tabu-
late the others off on the percentage system as if
such a catastrophe had never happened? The fact
is, the current geology is wholly built up from the
Cambrian to the Pleistocene on the dogmatic denial

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Scientific Methods 251

that any such catastrophe has occurred to the world
in which Man lived, for one such event happening
in our modern interdependent world is enough to
make the whole pretty scheme found in our text-books
^ tumble like a house of cards. Like the patient and
exact observations of the Ptolemaic astronomers,
which accumulated volumes of evidence contradicting
their own theories, and which in the hands of Coper-
nicus and Galileo, Kepler and Newton, sealed the
doom of astronomical speculation and laid the foun-
dations of an exact science of the heavens; so have
the indefatigable labors of thousands of geologists
accumulated evidence which strikes at the very foun-
dation of the current uniformitarianism, and casts
a pall of doubt over every conclusion as to how or
when any given deposit of the ''older" rocks was
produced.

Here inductive science must leave the question
for the present. The possibility of such a world-
wide catastrophe, which might account for the major
part of the geological changes, needs no apology here.
The slightest disturbance of the nice equilibrium of
our elements would suffice to send the waters of the
ocean careering over the land; and in the abundance
of astronomical causes competent for such disturb-
ance, we cease to regard such an event as necessarily
contrary to ''natural law." The possibility of such
a thing no competent scientist now denies; it is the
problem of recovery from such a disaster which
makes the perplexity. But incredible or not as the
latter may be regarded, I claim to have established

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

252 The Fundamentals of Geology

a perfect chain of scientific argument proving a
world-wide catastrophe of some sort since Man was
upon, it. But this fact, if once admitted, strikes at
the very foundation of the current science, and bids
us readjust our theories from this view-point. The
venerable scheme of a life succession becomes only
the taxonomic or classification series of the world
that existed before this disaster, and it becomes the
business of our science to try to find out how many
and what deposits were due to this event, and what
were accumulated during the imknown period of
previous existence. Those of us who wish to specu-
late can then let our imaginations have free play as
to the uncounted ages before that event; but the
''phylogenic series" as a rational scientific theory
is in limbo forever. Inductive geology, therefore,
deals not with the formation of a world, but with
the ruins of one ; it furnishes us no materials for
constructing a cosmogony, that is, nothing as to
the details or order in which Creation took place,
though, as we have seen, it indirectly proclaims the
general fact of a literal Creation in no uncertain
tones.

But this latter problem lies across the boundary-
line in the domain of philosophy and theology, and
to these systems of thought we may cheerfully leave
the task of readjustment in view of the facts here
presented. A few disconnected thoughts along these
lines I have ventured to insert here, not strictly as
a part of my purely scientific argument, but as an
appendix.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

APPENDIX

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Digitized by

Google

APPENDIX

Reflections

In the preceding pages the author has endeavored
to develop a scientific argument pure and simple.
He has purposely restrained it in many ways, and
has tried to be quite conservative in urging the ab-
solutely demonstrative character of the evidence of
a great world catastrophe similar to that described
in the Bible as the Flood. But these contemporary
documents, taken from the rocky pages of nature's
diary, which thus become such conclusive vouchers
for the Biblical story of the Deluge, compel us to
go back of all this and face the problem of Creation
itself; for if this world catastrophe has intervened,
and if we can not be sure that one type of life is
older than another, inexorable logic will compel us
to acknowledge the great fact of a literal Creation
of doubtless all the various distinct types of life
(Man included) at approximately one time.

Hence the author does not feel called upon to
apologize in any way for attempting now to show
the connection between an inductive scheme of geol-
ogy as set forth in the body of this work and the
religion of Christianity; though our remarks along
this line must necessarily be very brief.

The most fundamental idea of religion is the

255

Digitized by VjOOQIC

256 The Fundamentals of Geology

fatherhood of God as our Creator. The only true
basis of morality lies in our relationship to Him
and to His universe as His creatures. During the
latter half of the nineteenth century the Biblical
idea of a Creation at some definite and not very re-
mote period in the past became much modified by
reason of certain theories of evolution, which ex-
plained the origin of plants and animals as the result
of slow-acting causes, now in operation around us,
prolonged over immense ages of time. These theories,
though built up wholly on the current geology as a
foundation, were yet supposed to be firmly estab-
lished in science, and after a spirited discussion
among biologists for a few years, were almost uni-
versally accepted in some form or other by the re-
ligious leaders of Christendom. And though the
^'theistic evolution" of recent years may be sup-
posed to have modified somewhat the stern heartless-
ness of pure Darwinism, it still leaves the Christian
world quite at variance with the old Biblical doc-
trines regarding good and evil, Creation, redemp-
tion, the atonement, etc.

And these are not the only effects of the general
acceptance of these ideas as an explanation of the
origin of things. We see their moral effects in the
generation now coming on the stage of action —
men educated in an atmosphere of evolution, and
accustomed from youth to the idea that all progress,
whether in the individual or the race, is to be reached
only by a ceaseless struggle for existence and sur-
vival at the expense of others. In the words of Sir

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Appendix 257

William Dawson, these doctrines have ^'stimulated
to an intense degree that popular unrest so natural
to an age discontented with its lot . . . which
threatens to overthrow the whole fabric of society as
at present constituted/' (*' Modern Ideas of Evo-
lution,'' p. 12.)

This popular and perfectly natural application of
the evolution doctrine to every-day life is certainly
intensifying, as never before, the innate selfishness of
human nature, and, in every pursuit of life, embit-
tering the sad struggle for place and power. Per-
haps no other one cause and result serve more
plainly to differentiate the present strenuous age
from those that have gone before. The hitherto
undreamed-of advantages and creature comforts of
the present day, instead of tending toward universal
peace and happiness, are apparently only giving a
wider range to the discontent and degravity of the
natural human heart; so much so, that any one
familiar with the history of nations can not but
feel a terrible foreboding creep over him as he faces
the prospect presented to-day by civilized society the
world over.

The only remedy for the many and increasing •
evils of our world is the old-fashioned religion of
Christ and His apostles, — and this applied, not to
the state, but to the individual. The soul-regenera-
ting truths of Christianity have always, wherever
a proper test has been given them by the individual,
resulted in moral uplift and blessing. Ecclesiastical
policies and ideas have always, wherever allowed

17 — Geology

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

258 The Fundamentals of Geology

to influence civil legislation, resulted in oppression
and tyranny.

What has geology to do with all this! — It has
much to do with it. Correct ideas of geology will
remove a great many vain notions — I had almost
said superstitions — regarding our origin, which now
pass under the name of science. And in thus re-
moving false ideas, it leaves the ground cleared for
more correct ideas regarding Creation, and thus for
truer concepts of morality, the old idea of **must"
and ^* ought'* based on our relation to God as His
creatures.

Mark the words here used. I say it ** leaves the
ground cleared" for truer ideas of Creation; be-
cause inductive geology must not be expected to
teach us anything about the how or even the when,
but only the general fact of a real Creation essen-
tially different from anything now going on. This
is the utmost limit of any physical science. Seem-
ingly every possible scheme of cosmogony has been
attempted in ancient or in modern times, except the
Christian one that all things animate and inanimate
stood up before Jehovah at His word. True in-
ductive science has refuted one after another of
these man-made schemes or perverse guesses, the
last to be proved false being the evolution theory,
which is still believed by many. But the limits of
any true natural science are reached when it removes
these false ideas. It can not demonstrate just how
Creation was brought about; it can only prove how
it was not. But though there may be possible an

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Appendix 259

infinite series of false schemes of Creation, and
though it may be said to be impossible to prove
every single instance of an infinite series wrong,
yet they are all so essentially similar, that, having
proved so many false, it is safe to say that inductive
geology, in destroying forever the succession-of-life
idea, demonstrates the truth of the only possible
alternative, namely. Creation as the definite and
immediate act of the infinite God. Before this
awful but sublime fact, looming up against the
dawn of time as the fogs of evolution and cosmolog-
ical speculations clear away, the human mind stands
to-day as never before within historic times.

With a fairly complete knowledge of the chemical
make-up of protoplasm, with a good acquaintance with
the life history and reproduction of living cells, we
yet know nothing of the origin of life. With a good
working knowledge of variation, hybridization, etc.,
we know nothing of the origin of the various kinds
of life. While with. a fairly good understanding of
the present geographical distribution of plants and
animals, and of where their fossils occur in the
rocks, we are profoundly ignorant of any particular
order in which these forms originated on our globe,
or whether they all took origin at approximately
one and the same time. In short, having reached
out along every known line of investigation, until
we have apparently attained the limits of the human
powers in investigation and research, twentieth cen-
tury science must stand with uncovered head and

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

260 The Fundamentals of Geology

bowed form in presence of that most august thought
of the human mind, ^'In the beginning God created/^

In other words, we do not know how life could
originate from the not-living except by a direct
Creation. And since scientific observation has never
yet shown us a single example of a distinct kind of
life' arising from another kind, and especially since
we now know that geology can not show us that the
various lower forms of life lived on the earth for
ages before the higher forms, we can not believe
that any distinct type of life, low or high, could
originate except by a direct Creation. The higher
forms could not grow out of the lower any easier
than the lower could arise from the not-living. The
higher forms demand a Creator just as much as the
first speck of protoplasm; and for aught we can
now see, all the various forms of life were doubtless
created at approximately the same time.

Personally, I do not feel that we need speculate
as to how Creation was accomplished. Perhaps with

*De Vries and others have shown how ordinary or taxonomic species
as usually characterized by science can originate by "mutation/'
This may explain the origin of a large fraction of the 25,000 Verte-
brates, the 22,000 MoUusks, the 200,000 Arthropods, etc., as existing
in our modern world, for the more variation we admit the easier it is
to explain how the modern world could have grown out of the ruins
of that ancient one. But they are not all species that are called species;
for though these so-called new ''species'' of De Vries may perpetuate
themselves, and even under some conditions maintain their seemingly
fixed characters, yet there is no evidence of their coming up to the
physiological test demanded^ by Huxley and all the best authorities of
being themselves indefinitely fertile, and at the same time cross sterile
with all others. These new species that have thus originated by scientific
experiment may be as good species as any recognized by taxonomists;
on that point I have nothing to say. But they are not new forms or
new kinds in the sense intended in the text. See also Note on page 54
of this volume.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Appendix 261

all our science we would not be able to understand
such a work even if the Creator Himself were
to undertake to explain it to us. And yet, while I
do not consider it a very promising field for re-
search, we ought to have no more reluctance, per se,
to consider the manner in which the first cell or the
first species was formed, than the way in which a
chicken is now produced from the egg. But as a
concession to those of my readers who are impatient
at any of the closed doors of science labeled *^No
Admittance," I give the following suggestions as a
possible explanation of the subject, or until we know
more about it. They are from the author's former
book, '* Outlines of Modern Science and Modern
Christianity'':

We are getting no nearer the real mystery in the case
by saying that all the tissues of the chick are built up by
the protoplasm in the egg. The protoplasm in the toes is the
\ same as that in the little creature 's brain. Why does the one
' build up claws and the other brain cells ? Does memory
guide these little things in their wonderful division of labor ?
But they all started from one original germ cell, hence they
all ought to have the same memory pictures. Or have they
entered into a mutual benefit arrangement, like the members
of a community, as Haeckel would have us believe, each con-
tributing by actual desire and effort, I suppose, an individual
share to the general progress of the whole ? — No ; they have
all the appearance of being mere automata working at the
direct bidding of a Master Mind. Every step of the process
needs a Creator, just as much as the first cell division. In
the words of one of the highest of scientific authorities, **We
still do not know why a certain cell becomes a gland cell,
another a ganglion cell; why one cell gives rise to a smooth
muscle fiber, while a neighbor forms voluntary muscle;" and
this also * * at certain, usually predestined, times in particular

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

262 The Fundamentals of Geology

places/' (^^ Nature," May 23, 1901, pp. 75, 76.) And in
the same way the idea of a Creator would not be disposed
of, even if we could possibly hit upon the probable process
of world formation. We would not, by understanding the
process, really get at the cause of the phenomena, any more
than we do now at the real cause of life. From the scientific
method the real mystery remains as much behind the veil as
ever before.— Pp. Ill, 112.

The origin of life must ever remain a great mys-
tery, for nothing at all like it is now going on. And
yet it could not well have been otherwise than by
some orderly or *^ natural" process. Do we under-
stand all natural processes? At some time life was
not in existence on our globe. All agree that it had
a beginning. Even if spoken into existence by the
word of the great Creator, the living was at some
time formed from the not-living or the not-material.
It does not take even Huxley's famous '^act of
philosophic faith" to believe that. So that, in spite
of all the haze that has been thrown around this
question, the Biblical Creation, of life is just as
*^ scientific" as is evolution or any other theory*, and
no more contrary to or even outside of ** natural
law" than are they, though it is obvious that this
first Creation of life was radically different from
the manner by which life is reproduced and sus-
tained to-day. It is in this sense that '^the works
were finished from the foundation of the world"
(Heb. 4:3), for we have nothing now going on by
which to judge of the manner or process of the
creation of life.

Again I quote from this same work:

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Appendix 263

But see what we avoid. According to the Bible, death
in even the lower animals (and consequently all misery and
suffering — the less is included in the greater) is only the
result of sin on the part of man, the head of animated nature,
a reflex or sympathetic result, if you will. But with evolution
we have countless millions of years of creature suffering,
cruelty, and death before man appeared at all, cruelty and
death that . . . have no moral meaning at all, save as the
work of a fiend creator, or a bungling or incompetent one.
— P. 116,

The author then gives a quotation from Le
Conte, illustrating the extremely various ways in
vehich matter and energy act on the different planes
of their existence, while 'Hhe passage from one
plane upward to another is not a gradual passage
by sliding scale, but at one bound. When the neces-
sary conditions are present, a new and higher form
of force at once appears, like birth into a higher
sphere. ... It is no gradual process, but sudden,
like birth into a higher sphere." (''Evolution and
Religious Thought,'' pp. 314-316.)

The argument then proceeds as follows:

The living at some time originated from the not-living.
We call it Creation. Can any one find a better name? It
is preposterous to call it a process of development or evolu-
tion due to the inherent physical and chemical properties of
the atoms, and effected by them alone. And it is equally
absurd to try to make it appear as a mere incident in a scheme
of uniformity, identical with what is now going on. There
is nothing like it now going on anywhere on earth. And yet
it is doubtless as much in harmony with the basic laws of
the universe as are the invariable and exact combinations
of chemistry. We do not understand the ultimate reasons
for chemical affinity any more than we do for gravitation.
They are only expressions of the methodical, order-loving

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

264 The Fundamentals of Geology

mind of Deity. Creation was only another action of the
same mind, and we are not really finding any new difficulty
when we say that the processes or the reasons for creative
action are beyond our comprehension. When we can really
solve some of the myriad problems right before our eyes,
it will be time enough to complain about Creation being in-
comprehensible or contrary to ''natural law."

Eemembering, then, that, even according to Huxley's
**act of philosophic faith," the origin of the living from the
not-living must at some time have taken place, why should
we suppose that such a process was confined to one example f
If, when the young planet ''was passing through physical
and chemical conditions which it can no more see again than
a man can recall his infancy," the "necessary conditions"
were favorable for one such creation of life, why not a few
billion? Would the production of a few billion such begin-
nings of protoplasm be any less ''natural" than of one alone?
Eemember, however, that the arrangement of these "necessary
conditions," as well as the endowing of matter with these
"properties," not only requires a cause, but this cause must
be intelligent, for there is indisputable design in this first
origin of life.

The food for the development of this first embryo might,
for aught that we know, be conveyed to it direct from the
ultimate laboratories of nature, and it thus be built up by
protoplasm in the usual way, without the medium of a
parent form — other than the great Father of all. Or would
it be any less according to natural law to believe that a Bird
passed through all the usual stages of embryonic develop-
ment from the not-living up to the full-fledged songster of
the skies in one day — the fifth day of Creation ? And if one
example, why not a million f For remember that the youthful
earth was then passing through strange conditions, "which,"
as Huxley says, "it can no more see again than a man can
recall his infancy." — ^^ Outlines,'* etc., pp, 119, 120,

Omitting some remarks about . embryology, I con-
tinue this quotation as follows:

But what "law" would be violated in this springtime of
the world if, instead of twenty years or so for full develop-

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Appendix 265

ment, the first man passed through all these stages in one day
— the sixth of Creation week? He might as well have orig-
inated from the not-living as the evolutionist's first speck of
protoplasm, for he certainly now starts from a mass of this
same protoplasm, identical, as we have seen, in all plants
and animals.

And by originating thus, he would escape that horrible
heritage of bestial and savage propensities which he would
get through evolution, a heritage that would make it not
his fault, but his misfortune, that sin and evil are in the
world, and that would also shift the responsibility for the
evidently abnormal condition of 'Hhis present evil world''
from the creature to the Creator, and change to us His char-
acter from that of a loving Father, fettered by no conditions
in His creation, to that of either a bungling, incompetent
workman or a heartless fiend; for, though I am almost
ashamed to write the words, the god of the evolutionist must
be either the one or the other. — P. 121,

The most firmly established result of modern
biology is that the living can not originate from the
not-living except by. a veritable miracle, or in other
words, a direct Creation. Nor can a distinct, new
kind of life originate from another kind. Neither
of these processes is now going on in our modern
world, as all acknowledge. And now in the light
of the facts brought out in the previous pages, in-
ductive geology assures us that the lower forms of
life did not live on the globe for ages before the
higher forms; and hence in a twofold sense it is
unscientific folly to talk of the higher forms having
developed out of the lower. A direct Creation is
the unavoidable conclusion of every rational mind,
and a direct Creation for the higher forms as much
as for the very lowest ; and it is in the highest degree

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

266 The Fundamentals of Geology

reasonable that all the various diBtinct types of life
were created at approximately the same time. For
since life demands a real Creation, since each sepa-
rate kind demands a real Creation, and no one kind
can be proved to be older than another, why is not a
literal Creation of all the forms of life at approxi-
mately one time demonstrated as a scientific fact for
every one capable of logical reasoning? Nothing less
than this can now be regarded as the net results of
modern science.

In a very similar way chemistry and physics
have long been pointing us backward to the same
period for the origin of all that they can tell us.
The grandest generalization of the former science
is that matter is not creatable by any natural or
artificial means. This is the doctrine of the con-
servation of matter. About the middle of the nine-
teenth century the same general truth was discov-
ered regarding energy, and we now have the doctrine
of the conservation of energy as the grandest gen-
eralization of physics, and one of the most magnifi-
cent in all science. A few decades later, Pasteur
demonstrated for all coming time that life is not now
originating from the not-living by any agency known
to man. Thus matter, and energy, and life are not
creatable by any means within our knowledge. And
now geology, when allowed to give her testimony
in a thoroughly scientific fashion, testifies to the same
general truth regarding the great groups of plant
and animal forms, like physics and chemistry point-
ing backward along the great perspective of the ages

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Appendix 267

to the same vanishing-point, already charted long
ago in the Christian Bible as the birthday of the
world.

With an appreciation nurtured by centuries of
STUDY OF God's larger book, baffled often though
she has been, and disappointed many times in the

WORDS SHE has ENDEAVORED TO SPELL OUT, SciENCE
TO-DAY PROCLAIMS ITS SUBJECT, ITS TITLE-PAGE, WHICH
SHE HAS NOW AT LAST DECIPHERED, ^^In-THE BEGINNING

God created the heaven and the earth/'

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Digitized by

Google

Ind.

[The numbers refer to pages]

Adams, Leith 140

Agassiz, Louis •. . . 55, 62, 123

Alberta, Canada 7, 76-78, 86

Algonkian rocks 65, 92

Archaean rocks 64

Baconian method 29, 239

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "The Fundamentals of Geology and Their Bearings on the Doctrine of a Literal ..."

See other formats